Paul Bettany reteams with LEGION director Scott Stewart for this post-apocalyptic vampire saga, which again proves a cool idea alone doesn’t make a good film. Based on a popular comic book series, the set-up for PRIEST is sci-fi gold. After an age-old war between mankind and vampires leads to a nuclear holocaust, Church and State combine to form an Orwellian feudal system that leaves society cowering in abject poverty. The Priests, specially trained vampire killers subsequently disbanded by the Church, live on the fringes of society, but when vampires kidnap his niece, one such warrior (Paul Bettany) requests reinstatement. The Church declines, denying the existence of a new vampire menace, so partnered only with a young sheriff (Cam Gigandet) from the wastelands, Priest sets out alone – only for the authorities to send his former comrades after him.

At this point PRIEST turns its back on the BLADE RUNNER-inspired urban hell and corrupt papal hierarchy it has created, to embark on a futuristic remake of seminal Western THE SEARCHERS, with Bettany as John Wayne and vampires as the Comanche. Priest and Sheriff Hicks scour the desert, invade vampire reservations and poke around in dormant hives, only to discover a new colony of gribblies readying for attack, under the leadership of priest-turned-halfbreed-vampire Black Hat (Karl Urban). In the world of PRIEST, vampires aren’t immortal humans with eyeliner and sullen expressions, but faceless monsters who dwell underground. Humans who aren’t killed become slaves, although Black Hat is a new breed and plans to…what exactly?

Black Hat is a shoddily-conceived villain with muddled motives and a plan that defies logic. But the problems with PRIEST extend much further, and at every crossroads the writers veer away from the original and intriguing, in favour of the soulless and generic. Characters like Brad Dourif’s peddler, Christopher Plummer’s religious leader, not to mention Maggie Q and the other priests are underdeveloped and then discarded. Bettany certainly looks the part but the script never affords him the chance to make Priest the iconic hero he deserves to become. PRIEST doesn’t even include any decent fight sequences to showcase the priests’ alleged combat prowess or just to make the film more fun, instead we are subjected to hokey CGI action that is all the more disappointing considering Stewart’s acclaimed background in visual effects.

PRIEST begins with so much promise, but has no idea where it’s going, and ends after a truncated second act with no climactic Cathedral City standoff that seemed a no-brainer from the outset. Instead of attempting to rehash John Ford with speeder bikes, PRIEST could have been intelligent, insightful, satirical or just plain entertaining had the Priests stayed on the ranch and had the vampires come to them. It almost makes one wish for a sequel just to see Stewart get it right, but no studio executive looking at PRIEST will be praying for a Second Coming any time soon.