Movie Review: Priest

Synopsis: A western-fused post-apocalyptic thriller set in an alternate world -- one ravaged by centuries of war between man and vampires. The story revolves around a legendary Warrior Priest (Paul Bettany) from the last Vampire War who now lives in obscurity among the other downtrodden human inhabitants in walled-in dystopian cities ruled by the Church. When his niece (Lily Collins) is abducted by a murderous pack of vampires, Priest breaks his sacred vows to venture out on an obsessive quest to find her before they turn her into one of them.

Did you ever see John Ford's The Searchers, with John Wayne? This is pretty much an updated version of that. Of course it's a lot more slick and stylish and there's loads more violence. And oh yeah, replace the evil Injuns with vampires too.

This movie took a bit of a beating from the critics but I actually found it pretty fun. It's equal parts sci-fi, action, and horror and there's a lot of all 3 in it. It looks great and the special effects are fantastic plus I never really found it dull personally. I thought the pacing was pretty nice.

Sure, it's derivative of about 10 films I can think of off the top of my head... Underworld, The Matrix, Jonah Hex, The Book of Eli, Dark City, etc and so forth. But really, I just didn't care. There's a lot of big dumb action and violence with an easy-to-follow story and plenty of cool sequences for horror/sci-fi fans. Of course there's not much character development and it's all quite predictable (and silly), but sometimes I'm not looking for those things, I just want to see vampires get their asses handed to them by a badass priest and his cowboy partner. AMIRIGHT?

7/10