‘Priest’ is a dystopian vampire Western with warrior priests and giant motorcycles, and yet somehow it remains stupefyingly dull. Seems impossible, but there it is. I saw it for free and I still felt sort of robbed.

I can imagine that at some point in the development process this looked like a fun ‘B’ movie that might do well in the lull before blockbuster season. It’s certainly laced with almost every kind of fanboy bait. The warrior priests have giant face tattoos and are always jetting about on giant light-cycley dust-raisers trying to deal with the threat of quadrupedal vampires. They do this with an arsenal of bespoke, religious-themed weaponry: crucifix-shaped shuriken, silver daggers and some sort of berobed kung-fu. They are, as they must be to appeal to this movie’s demo, smarter and better than the dopes in authority, yet somehow still bullied and marginalized. They must act in secret to protect the cowed masses from their ignorant and arrogant leaders. Then they return in victory to rub the church’s nose in the sweet stank of their awesomeness.

So it’s some sort of masters-level alchemy that takes that sure-fire formula and renders it limp and borderline unwatchable.

It’s too dark to see a lot of what’s happening, especially in the 3D glasses. There’s no reason to care about any of the characters, or the stakes. The vampires are cool-looking, but the action scenes play out like a bad video game with the Priests playing in God-mode. It is unlikely you will enjoy this film, even if you see it for nothing.