Film Filter: Off- I went in to this movie not really knowing a whole lot about it, which I think is a pretty solid approach. No expectations going into a film usually leaves a greater chance for me to be into the movie, and this one was no exception.
Pros- Apparently this film is based off of a graphic novel, which is not a new trend in the land of cinemas these days. My main concern is that graphic novels of notoriety like Superman, Spiderman and Batman are fairly well known throughout the masses, which allows the directors to sort of jump right in to the plot, as they have the luxury of knowing most of their audience is aware of what's going on. With Priest, however, I'm not sure there was as large a following of the graphic novel and to be honest, I didn't even know it existed. That being said, I think they did a fantastic job of keeping the audience up to speed without "story telling" to us and making us feel like imbeciles. They introduced a little of the plot in an overly grotesque graphic novel-like intro, which I found to be very successful. They also did a nice job of intermittently answering our questions along the way without taking away from the action in the story.
Next was the fact that the film was in 3-D. I will have to honestly tell you that I would have enjoyed the movie just about the same if it weren't in 3-D, which you should be ecstatic about. It was not a gimmicky 3-D ploy, but an enhancement of the scenery and the setting. Most of the time, I didn't even realize it was in 3-D, other than the ashes in the city seemed to float around in the theater. Once you got used to it, much like Avatar, you forgot about it and just enjoyed the movie.
The use of vampires in both movies and literature often varies, but many concepts also stay the same. For example, many people have recently portrayed vampires as sensual, un-dead human beings, with an unearthly sense of beauty and mystique about them. (i.e. Twilight, Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned, Brahm Stoker's Dracula, etc.) Priest took the idea of the vampire and took it a direction not yet seen on film. I won't go into explicit detail for fear of ruining the aesthetics for you if you see the film, but let's just say THESE vampires won't be seductively luring me into a garden with their sensual voices so they can suck my blood. They also toyed with the concept of infection, and flipped in my mind everything I knew about vampires. I kind of got irritated with it initially, and then I realized vampires weren't real and that it wasn't their fault that everyone and their brother adopted the same idea of them as sensual, human-like creatures.
Lastly I am going to say the way that Cathedral City looks is SWEET. They did a great job with all of the landscaping and settings; whether or not they were CG became irrelevant because they looked awesome. Also, the score that went alongside the movie was very well done, too. I don't often listen to the music accompanying a movie as succinctly as I should, but this soundtrack stuck out to me as wildly appropriate, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Cons- Biggest con- one super cheesy line, emitted by who I affectionately refer to as Cowboy. His character, in general, left much to be desired. He was kind of awkward, and mildly dumb to boot. Not that Lucy should be ungrateful to him for trying to save her, but God help her if she gets into trouble again and Cowboy is her only hope.
Wrap-up- Very good movie! I highly recommend it, even if you can't view it in 3-D. You're not missing much, and that's not a slam, it's just the truth.
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