Priest is a 2011 American action horror movie directed by Scott Stewart and starring Paul Bettany. It is partially based on Hyung Min-Korean woo’s comic with the same title. Humanity as well as vampires have been at odds for millennia inside an alternative reality. A veteran Warrior Priest dwells in obscurity since the last Vampire War, before his niece (Lily Collins) is kidnapped by vampires.
On May 13, 2011, the movie was released. Despite earning over $78 million at the box office on a $60 million production budget, reviewers lambasted the picture, praising its visual aesthetic as well as art direction but condemning and the use of genre clichés, screenplay, acting, editing, and action scenes—though some of the latter were commended.
A centuries-long conflict involving humans and vampires has wreaked havoc on the planet’s surface, leading to the establishment of a theocracy known as The Church. Notwithstanding the vampires’ sensitivity to sunlight and most of humanity’s technical achievements, the vampires’ superior strength and speed rendered them difficult to vanquish until humanity took refuge in massive walled cities and recruited a corps of elite warriors known as the Priests.
A party of Priests approaches the Sola Mira Hive in the first scene, and yet are assaulted by the vampires. As they try to flee, one among their number is apprehended from behind, and their commander attempted to pull them to safety but which is forced to just let go there and witness him being pulled back through into hive, sobbing.
The bulk of the vampires were murdered years later, while the others were placed in reserves. The Priests were disbanded by the Clergy once the battle was ended. Some humans seek a way of life outside of the walled cities, away from The Church’s authoritarian authority.
Hicks (Cam Gigandet), the sheriff of a free town, Augustine, approaches Priest (Paul Bettany). Priest discovers that his brother, Owen, and Owen’s wife, Shannon—lover Priest’s when he joined the clergy—were killed in a vampire assault, and also that Priest’s niece, Lucy (Lily Collins), was abducted.
Hicks seeks Priest’s assistance in rescuing Lucy. Priest asks the Church to restore his authority, but Monsignor Orelas (Christopher Plummer), the Church’s leader, does not believe the vampire storey and refuses, preferring to maintain the popular belief that now the vampires have indeed been completely defeated, fearing that doing so would jeopardise the Church’s authority. Orelas sends three Priests and a Priestess (Maggie Q) to fetch Priest back after he stubbornly departs the city.
Priest and Hicks arrive at the Nightshade Reservation, where a few of the surviving vampires dwell with humans known as Familiars, who have been afflicted with a disease that renders them submissive to vampires.
Following a bloody struggle, the duo learns that the majority of the vampires have found refuge in Sola Mira, which was supposed to have been abandoned following the conflict. Priestess joins them at Sola Mira after being a member of Priest’s crew during the unsuccessful attack on the Hive. The trio kills a Hive Guardian vampire before learning that the vampires have spawned a new army and constructed a tunnel out of the mountain towards Jericho. The other three Priests arrive in Jericho just as night falls and an armoured train arrives, bringing hundreds of vampires with them.
A powerful and mysterious person in a black cap leads the vampires (Karl Urban). When the three Priests refuse to enter Black Hat, he murders them all.
Priest, Priestess, as well as Hicks, arrive at Jericho the next morning and found the town deserted as well as the three crucified Priests. After she admits her affections for him, the Priest and Priestess enjoy an intimate moment, believing already that Shannon has gone, he will no longer feel linked to her. Gently, the priest declines. The vampires had been utilising the trains to move by day and assault the free towns at night, with the walled city at the end of both the railway line, Priest thinks.
Hicks feels that perhaps the sun protects the cities as well, but Priest explains that perhaps the cities’ huge clouds of smoke and ash have robbed them of sunlight indefinitely. The attack would be a massacre if indeed the train hits one of the towns.
Hicks, who is still in love with Lucy, threatens Priest, fearing that if she is infected by the vampires, Priest would murder her. Priestess says that he is unable to do so since Lucy is Priest’s daughter, and Owen acted as Priest’s spouse and father while Priest was abducted by the Church. Lucy was never informed of her true parentage.
Priest and Hicks board a train to save Lucy whilst Priestess enhancing competitiveness to place a bomb just on railroad rails. After fighting vampires and Familiars, the two are eventually defeated by Black Hat just like they come upon Lucy. The priest who’d been killed in an attack on Sola Mira is discovered to be Black Hat. The vampire Queen fed him some blood upon capturing him, transforming him into another Vampire-Human hybrid capable of surviving the daylight. Lucy comes to know regarding her parentage while Priest battles Black Hat. Priestess fights many Familiars here on railway tracks in front of her, although one of those breaks the detonator for such explosions.
Rather, she straps explosives to her motorcycle and rides this into the train engine. The vampires are killed in the explosion, as well as Black Hat is engulfed in flames, but Hicks, Priest, Priestess, and Lucy are able to run away.
When Priest returns towards the city, he confronts Monsignor Orelas during Mass, informing him about the burned train that contained the vampires’ remains but not the Queen’s. He demonstrates this by tossing a vampire head onto the floor, startling the entire crowd. Orelas continues to refuse to trust him, pronouncing the battle to be ended although Priest claims it is only just begun.
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