Priest (2011, USA)

Priest isn’t nearly as bad as Legion – much to its detriment, in fact. Whereas Legion was a screaming pile of awfulness, Priest is what’s left behind when you take all of the fun out of a bad movie. The mythology feels half-hearted at best, as the potentially awesome conceit of a futuristic vampire Western is executed with relentless grimness. The only way to make a film from an idea this wild is with a surfeit of panache, but the only person here who seems to get that is Karl Urban as the big bad. Bettany acts so hard that it seems like he’s performing an eternal chore – I know he’s supposed to be playing a man of the cloth, but won’t someone put him out of his misery? Maybe put him in a nice art film or something? He was funny in A Knight’s Tale – perhaps a comedy?

Speaking of Urban (he’s pretty delightful in the first half of Red, by the way, before getting shoved aside in favor of plot like so many other characters in that movie), it’s difficult when the best aspect of your film is also one of its most thematically problematic. The coolest thing about Priest’s vampires are their beastliness – none of the sexy stranger junk from your typical vampire fare, these are gross creatures, eyeless and feral and dripping with slime. Urban’s introduction (way too early in the film) dashes that almost immediately, giving us yet another suave bloodsucker. Priest tries to have its cake and eat it too, and while that might work in the long-form graphic novel series, here it just reads as laziness.

(And I have to ask – what’s with Cam Gigandet? I have seen him in three movies in the past three months, and I STILL don’t recognize the guy. Total charisma suck.)