Vampire films have always been popular, and they tend to pique the curiosity of a large number of moviegoers. In their respective films, these creatures with sharp fangs and pale skin often wreak havoc on the human population, but they are just as vulnerable as humans when it comes to being bitten by the love bug, as evidenced by arguably one of the most popular works of vampire fiction, the Twilight series.
There is no love triangle in this film, and there are no pale, good-looking, broody vampires; instead, there are bloodthirsty ancient vampires, a world dominated by the church, and one Priest who goes out to save his daughter.
The film is a 2011 action horror thriller that, despite being a box office disappointment, has now become something of a cult classic. The film stars Paul Bettany in the lead role, and we follow him on his quest to save his daughter as a former war hero who has now been abandoned by the church that gave him life.
Maggie Q and Christopher Plummer are among the other cast members. Scott Stewart, who has written and directed a number of supernatural films and television shows, including this one, is the director of the picture. His most recent works are the supernatural drama Siren and the supernatural action series Dominion. Without further ado, let us enter the realm of Priest and observe how this film portrays vampires in a way that is distinct from other conventional depictions.
Vampire Killer – Priest (2011) Explained
The vampires in this movie are ancient, ferocious, and not pretty to look at, at all. But before we get into them, we have to first understand the sort of world this movie is set in. The movie is loosely based on a Tokyopop Korean comic of the same name by Hyung Min-woo and the world it builds for us is told through the animated opening sequence.
It is interesting to note that this opening sequence is animated because the live-action re-enactment of the history of humans and vampires was out of budget and this was a compromise on the part of the team. The opening sequence tells us that vampires are ancient creatures and have been on earth for as long as humans have but there has always been a bitter rivalry between the two.
The vampires were always stronger and faster but because they were nightwalkers and couldn’t come out during the day, humans had some respite. However, things got so bad that the entire human race retreated into cities encircled by massive walls, built by the church, just so they could survive.
It was in this dire situation that the church created the Priests, a group of people that they trained in combat and were so skilled that they alone brought victory to mankind and slaughtered vampires with ease. Having won the war, the Priests were deemed as a threat to the power of the church and were thus disbanded and disregarded, and treated with disdain.
The remaining vampires were put into guarded places called ‘reservations’ where they could live and feed on the blood of animals. There are also some people who live outside the walled cities to be free of the controlling church but have to fend for themselves against the vampires.
The movie serves as an origin story for the main antagonist in this movie, Black Hat. One of the earliest scenes shows that Black Hat, played by Karl Urban was originally a Priest himself. He, along with the other Priests had walked into a vampire hive called the Sola Mira Hive and had been ambushed which led to a massive showdown between the Priests and the Vampires and it was during this fight that the vampires grabbed a hold of Karl Urban and while Paul Bettany tried to pull him away, he failed to do so and Urban was dragged away by the vampires into the depth of the hive. It turns out that he had not died but had been turned into the only human vampire in existence by the Queen of the hive and had thus returned to destroy the Priests that left him and allow the vampires to rule.
With this in place, the movie unfolds rather quickly which keeps you hooked since it is action sequence after action sequence. Bettany’s ‘niece’, Lucy gets kidnapped by vampires and he gets word of it from a Sheriff named Hicks who happens to be Lucy’s lover. The name ‘Lucy’ in particular could be a reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula where there is also a Lucy who needs to be saved. Bettany goes to a council to take permission for his quest to find Lucy who is actually his daughter, which is revealed later but is denied.
It is at this point that he decides to go his own way and defy God because “To defy the Church is to defy God”. He sets out with Hicks to find Lucy and they track the vampires down to the nearest reservation from the town that Lucy was taken from. Knowing this, the clergy sends the rest of the disbanded Priests behind him, to find him and get him back, dead or alive.
We see them travel on their specially made bikes, across the wasteland in an effort to find the vampires. They reach the nearest reservation and after getting encircled first by human familiars and then by vampires, they manage to take them down but this encounter further confuses them because only 6 weak vampires were left behind in the reservation and the question thus rose, where did all the others go? They learn that all the other vampires have taken refuge in the Sola Mira hive and decide to go there to find out what was going on. In Sola Mira, they run into Priestess, who was on the same vampire hunting team as the Priest and she decides to help him. They jointly defeat a hive guardian vampire and after venturing deep, they figure out that the vampires have dug their way out of the hive and towards a town called Jericho.
They rush towards Jericho on their motorcycles but are too late and we see the vampire’s plunder and ravage through the town under the command of Black Hat. Priest, Hicks, and Priestess reach the next morning and face a deserted town but they learn that the vampires are traveling by train and attacking at night and that their end goal is to enter the walled cities via train and take over the cities.
They plan on stopping the train by blowing up the tracks and an intense action sequence follows. Priestess deals with the bomb and goes to plant it on the tracks while Hicks and the Priest board the train to find and save Lucy. As they enter the train, they are met with thousands of vampires and the Priest comes face to face with his old friend turned enemy, Black Hat. Being a human vampire and a Priest previously, Black Hat is immensely strong, agile, and also immune to sunlight, making him a formidable enemy, even for our skilled Priest.
They engage in combat which is truly entertaining to watch for anyone who loves action movies. The Priest gets a hold of Lucy and hangs on to the edge of the train for dear life and fun fact about this scene is that Karl Urban had actually stepped on Bettany’s hand by accident and Bettany’s scream is in fact very real but Urban at the time thought it was just really good acting.
While they battle, the Priestess also fights off familiars on the train tracks but one of them destroys the detonator so she decides to put the explosives on her bike and ride it into the engine of the train. She manages to jump off in time as the train goes up in flames but the story doesn’t end there. After the explosion, the black hat that Urban was wearing falls to the ground, pretty much untainted which hints at the fact that Black Hat is still alive. The movie had it all set for a sequel however when the movie flopped in the theatres, all plans of a sequel were abandoned.
At the very end of the movie, we see that the Priest brings back a vampire head to show the clergy that had denied him earlier. He also mentions that the vampire queen was not amongst the dead which means that she could give birth to many more. The clergy still denies the threat of a vampire menace but Priest cautions them all and says that it is definitely not the end and is just the beginning.
Vampires from Priest (2011) Explained
The vampires in this movie are not your average blood-sucking, pale, sexy ones that are largely used to in pop culture nowadays. They are ancient beings who are humanoid in appearance but have evolved to no longer have eyes because they dwell in the darkness. The lack of one sense has only made the others stronger.
They are also freakishly strong. The vampires in this film cannot talk and instead communicate with others using a hive-mind sort of thinking. The vampires can be divided into 4 categories since the vampires in this movie have a structure and hierarchy to their existence. Much like ants or bees, they have a hive-mind and they also live inside hives.
There is a vampire queen who produces drones or worker vampires, the other type of vampire is the hive guardian and the fourth type is the human-vampire of which species Black Hat is the only known member of. There is also another species known as human familiars who are humans that have been given the vampire pathogen and have developed certain changes and are subservient to the vampires that turned them. Let us take a better look at them.
At the very bottom of the vampire species chain is the human familiars. The human familiars are humans who have most likely voluntarily ingested the vampire pathogen which has caused them to develop translucent skin, sunken and dark eyes, and pointy ears however their abilities have remained more or less the same. They are subservient to their vampire masters and obey their commands.
Next in the hierarchy are the drone or worker vampires who are pale and hairless. They are humanoid but also not quite and are missing eyes. They have super speed, strength, heightened agility, and senses which makes them incomparable to humans. These vampires look a little similar to the aliens in Ridley Scott’s movie. They hunt for the hive and are the largest type when it comes to numbers.
The next type of vampire is the hive guardian. These vampires are decidedly more muscular, strong, and agile in comparison to the drones and are tasked with the job of protecting the hive against unwanted visitors. They are more canine-like in appearance as well and have larger teeth and they are also pale and sightless.
The highest-ranking vampire is the vampire Queen who is pale red in appearance and has a crown-like head. She is the one with the ability to lay eggs and produce more of their kind along with the one at the center of the hive mind. It was also her blood that had turned Karl Urban into the first and only human vampire.
Last but on least, we have the human-vampire. There is only one whose existence we know of. The appearance of this species is strikingly human and the only physical changes were that Black hat had sharp canine fangs and yellow eyes while everything else remained the same. They are also extremely strong and agile along with being immune to sunlight.
The Black Hat explored
As has been mentioned before, this movie can very well serve as the origin story for the villain, Black Hat. Black Hat has had one hell of a journey starting with his separation from the Priests to then becoming the one thing the Priests were trained to kill. Karl Urban’s character was originally a Priest himself and after getting separated from the team and almost being eaten to death by the vampires, he was saved by the vampire Queen of the Sola Mira Hive. The queen gave him her blood, making him the first-ever human vampire. Thus, Black Hat was not only a highly strong and skilled fighter; he also possessed supernatural strength and speed along with being immune to the sun.
It is seen that he kidnaps Bettany’s daughter to lure him and the other Priests out to exact his revenge and also lead the vampires to victory. As he is the only daywalker and has the queen’s blood in his veins, he considers himself to be the leader of the vampires as well. In the ending, although the train goes up in flames, the hat stays intact and Black Hat himself is nowhere to be found.
A priest was clearly designed to serve as the foundation for a film series. The film established the setting, and Black Hat was supposed to be the series’ enemy due to his open-ended fate. The role of Black Hat in Priest’s ending was intended to launch a film franchise, and here’s how it could have occurred.
Between the Priests and the Vampires, Black Hat provides a dangerous link as a daywalker. He is the first human vampire, according to legend. He deteriorated into lawlessness, spreading carnage in his wake. Black Hat is the leader of a gang of vampires who kidnaps Lucy at the start of the movie. The rest of the movie revolves around Priest’s pursuit of Black Hat. A priest is significantly more concerned with establishing Black Hat as an epic villain who poses a fresh threat to Priest than with developing a solid tale. Unfortunately, this build-up did not materialize since the film, was canceled for a sequel.
Is The Priest Film Too Different From Its Korean Comic Book Roots?
It is rather thrilling when a comic book-like Priest can be faithfully adapted, but it’s far more perplexing when they completely re-invent the tale. Despite the fact that Min-Woo Hyung visited the scene during filming, 2011’s Priest might almost pass for an original.
Priest by Min-Woo Hyung has 16 volumes of material to adapt, and it has a gripping and rich tale. Rather than drawing from this abundance of source material, the film chose to carve its own route, emulating action-horror films with big-budget cgis, such as Underworld.
Min-Woo Hyung’s original series combines horror, action, and western elements to tell the narrative of Ivan Isaacs, a Man Without a Name-style figure who is cursed with half a devil’s soul while attempting to eradicate a growing vampire danger.
As Isaacs progresses with his research on the undead, he is forced to confront the religious ideas that have defined him as he ventures into the unknown. Hyung’s Priest is based on a true story that dates back to the Crusades. It isn’t perfect, but it contains a large cast of characters and a fascinating lone anti-hero. Stewart’s Priest, interestingly, does not use the protagonist’s name from the original material as a required expression of respect.
Bettany’s role is referred to just as “Priest” in the film. The film creates its own canon and tale right on, informing viewers that this universe is set in an alternate history in which vampires coexist with humans but are restricted to walled towns. The protagonist is still a priest fighting evil, but this time he is accompanied by a cadre of like-minded priests who have been trained as assassins to deal with the vampire threat.
The priest decides to defy his organization and rush headlong into danger, but the protagonist is not cursed in any way. He’s also not alone, as he has family and support in the form of the other Priests in this universe. Priest maintains the western look of the comics, but it feels more like a post-apocalyptic scenario at moments, bordering on science fiction.
Stewart’s picture effectively presents a much smaller and more compact story, but it merges in with the rest of the genre as a result. Hyung’s Priest is a little here and there in certain places, but it has a more distinctive story. It’s possible that retaining more of the story’s substance from the comics would have helped the film reach a wider audience. A priest is a perfect example of studio manipulation and commercial cinema eliminating what makes a product unique.
Is There Going To Be A Priest 2?
‘Priest’ ends with a cliffhanger that begs for a sequel. The film concludes with the titular protagonist saving his daughter and presumably murdering the film’s antagonist, Black Hat. In addition, he thwarts Black Hat’s plan to destroy the city. The Priest and Priestess, on the other hand, are seen riding out of the city to find out where the Queen is. The other priests have been informed, and the Queen has stated that she intends to attack the city.
The vampire Queen would undoubtedly prove to be a powerful foe, as she was the one who created Black Hat, who proved to be a difficult opponent for the Priest to overcome. It would also be fascinating to see the Priest collaborate with other priests. The sequel has all the makings of being an epic follow-up.
Despite the premise, there is time before yet another sequel is revealed. It’s been several years since the publication of ‘Priest,’ and no official statement regarding a sequel has been made. As a result, despite the fact that the first film left the door open for a sequel, a sequel to Priest is unlikely. All plans for a sequel were dropped following the movie’s dismal record at the box office so while the premise was all set and the characters were all there with the makings of a series or a franchise, unfortunately, that will not happen.
The movie has gone a long way and is considered somewhat of a cult classic in today’s time. You should definitely watch this movie if you are a fan of action and also the vampire genre at large. The filming of this movie along with the CGI and special effects are also stellar and make for a great watch.
The storyline is definitely entertaining and while the animated sequence at the beginning was a compromise, it serves as a nice beginning and hooks anime lovers to the plot as well. This movie is definitely worth the watch and while some things can be a little out of place, as an overall experience, it is one that can definitely be appreciated.