Frigid watched Priest

[frigidmagi]

Oh Priest. We all knew I was going to see this movie. I knew perfectly well what I was getting into. Still I am disappoint. Disappointment is me. Damn you all, Priest could have been awesome, instead you didn't even have the balls to go off the rails into memorable bad movie. You played it safe... ABOUT A MOVIE WHERE NINJA CATHOLIC PRIESTS FIGHT MUTANT VAMPIRES ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!?!

*cough* right, should get that checked. Sorry. Spoilers ahoy.

Priest takes place on an alternate Earth. It has to because it assumes humanity has been battling strange mutant vampires (with no eyes!) since the middle ages and only the Catholic Church's training of super ninja priest hit squads was able to win the war. The vampire hives (hives?) were destroyed and the few remaining vampires herded into reservations. Sadly the damage of the war was so great (the opening scene has a guy checking for background radiation and soil contamination so I'm assuming nukes were chucked about with wild abandon) that most of humanity fell back into giant dystopian cities that are always dark where people live in a theocratic police state.

Said Theocratic police state is handled wonderfully! You get a sense of crushing order everywhere, people are constantly bombarded with messages stressing the primacy and rightful place of the Church. There are automated confession booths with jackbooted, automatic rifle wielding guards. This place looks like they were practicing for 40K the movie!

Of course the Church is able in 5 minutes to push me to finding them guilty of the sins of Heresy, Blasphemy (if you really want to know ask), Pride and Stupidity. No wonder a group of blind manic non-tool using blood suckers drove us near extinction. In this Alternate Earth we're all idiots.

Let me give an example. The Church goes to great expense and effort to find, train and equip men and women with extreme gifts of violence and supernatural physical abilities. After the war, you now have a group of violent, super fast and strong warriors who are skilled in killing things that can shred through platoons of trained soldiers. The priest do what armies with tanks and cannon cannot with melee weapons and their damn bare hands. You following me so far? So you win the war and you herd the remement population into prisons. What do you do with your war winning weapons of doom and death? You send them to shovel shit. Literally. Hey thanks for saving humanity, now never talk about it or meet each other and go work menial jobs and live on the edge of desperation.

I would beat the idiot who suggested that as a policy. Fuck if you're that worried about the Priest (why are worried about them? They're like super loyal until we do something retarded.) then put them to work guarding the damn vampires! I mean fuck! It's something they would actually find fulfillment in doing likely!

Evil doesn't have to mean retarded guys.

Moving on, our main character, Mr. Grimy Mcmutterson finds out his brother's family was wiped out in a vampire raid (well his sister in law is dead, his brother is dying and his "niece" has been kidnapped). This devilered by Hicks (it's only because of Aliens I remember that) who is Young, Awesome Sheriff CoolMan. Holy Fuck! This is big news, I mean... There shouldn't be any vampires around to raid! So wanting to stay right with God, he goes to the Church and ask for the permission to hunt these fucks down and bring the Rigtheous Wraith of the Almighty God upon them! Can I get a Fuck Yeah?

Church: "Fuck No!"

What!?! But!?! Remember when I said evil doesn't have to mean retarded? I was wrong on this alternate earth. The Chruch declares there can't be any vampires out because they say there can't and sending a priest out to save his family would be gross and panic people (hello? You're a totalitarian state! The people know what you tell them.). So Mcmutterson mutters screw that and kicks some ass and goes off into the waste to track vampires.

CoolMan and Mcmutterson form an action alliance (patent pending) to hunt down the vampires, save the girl and blow things up because well action! However if the girl has been bitten (infected) she gets ganked. CoolMan ain't cool with that but they shelf it.

They also find evidence of our big bad, who isn't a mutant alien vampire thingy but instead... Karl Urban! Hi Karl! Urban is damn fun in this movie and it's pretty clear he's in it for the fuck of it. And why not right?

Urban used to be a priest but was captured and chewed on before a vampire queen (seriously what the fuck are these things?) bleed in his mouth (must not judge the fetish, must not judge the fetish) and makes them the first ever human vampire (dun dun dun!) Now he rallies a vampire army on a train (VAMPIRES ON A TRAIN!) and is trying to sneak them into the cities for one hell of a part... I mean war! Yes! War! Because blood sucking fiends in the city would be a bad thing.

On the way to catch and have a climatic battle with Karl Urban (Looking forward to you in Judge Dread Karl!) they met Mcmutterson's war buddy, Hot Killer Asian Chick. *Looks over at my war buddies* ... *Looks back at Hot Killer Asian Chick* Man, what the hell? I totally got shafted in the war buddy department.

She's a priest to and was smart enough to skip ahead. She has the hots for Mcmutterson so... to hell with the church and my vows I want to fuck! But Mcmutterson despite practically declaring war on the church for someone he hasn't seen in 17 years (I'm not mocking here. He had a duty and was right to tell the Church to shove here but dude, you last saw the girl as an infant, how much can she mean to you as an individual?) won't break his vow. You know these guys remind me more of monks and nuns. They can't officiate church services, have no real place in the hierarchy and only can do a limited number of task and are pretty much expected to be poor. This movie should have been called Monk.

It's also here they reveal that the "niece" is actually Mcmutterson's daughter. See he was a grown and married man when the Church came for him. So his brother stepped in, while Mcmutterson went off to save humanity by violently destroying another species with his bare hands (to bad he missed a couple hundred or so)

Well they realize where the train is going and decide to blow it up! Yay explosions. They storm the train fighting vampires and Karl Urban (Karl kicks the unholy shit out of them until the explosion gets him, bye Karl!) and everyone is reunited and realizes, crap they didn't get the queen! Sequel! Sequel! Sequel!

Ahhhh how about not.

This movie clocked in at about 70 minutes or so and as such ran through the whole story. I never felt any attachment to anyone, the only characters names who I remember is Lucy, whose name they keep shouting at me in an effort to make me care about her (it's not that I don't want to guys but well... Who the fuck is Lucy besides some poor girl on a train full of vampires, I mean I want anyone recused under those circumstances what makes Lucy special?) and Hicks because Aliens was awesome.

This movie should have been longer and the movie should have done something with the characters it had instead of moving around from set piece to set piece. If it wasn't for Karl Urban I would slap this movie with a D+. But because he was a fun bad guy, the movie gets a C-.

As it stands this movie has given two rants, one about how we got our asses kicked by monsters who can't even use basic tools! Another over what a sink of Heresy, Blasphemy and every mortal sin the church is.

Wait for netflicks if you must see it but definitely don't watch this stinker in the theater.

Oh and Church dudes? You suck. Grow a brain!