The VelociPastor is a 2019 action/comedy about a priest who travels to China, where he inherits a mysterious ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur.
Well, here’s a thing that is real, a full length feature film about a priest who turns into a velociraptor and fights crime with a hooker … sort of. And yes, of course, without a moment of hesitation, absolutely and unreservedly, I say with the most strident of conviction, it’s bad. I mean, like truly bad. Bad to the point that it’s unwatchable, which is, I’m sure, entirely what writer and director Brendan Steere set out to do. Based on a 2011 grindhouse trailer he made as a film school project that unsurprisingly found some momentary fame online – thanks internet – this 70 minute extended version is well, like I said, a thing that exists. That’s all you really need to know.
It centers on a man of the cloth, a guy named Doug Jones (Greg Cohan), who, at the start of the film watches as his parents are blown up. Or at least that’s what the onscreen prompt says, an editing placeholder that reads ‘VFX: Car on Fire’ offering the first ‘joke’ of the film. We actually see just an empty street. Either way, Doug is crushed and begins questioning his faith, told by his mentor Father Stewart (Daniel Steere) to travel where God can’t find him. He ends up in China (which is definitely not China) and immediately comes upon a young woman in the woods with an arrow in her chest, she, in her last act on Earth, giving him a strange tooth-like talisman as she whispers something about a Dragon Warrior. He cuts his hand on it and well, naturally, it gives him the power to transform into a dinosaur. Back home, he saves a prostitute named Carol (Alyssa Kempinski), teaming with her to take out scum, soon coming upon the killer of his family and then a martial arts drug lord. Time to get his claws dirty.
So, yeah, it’s a little hard to take any of this seriously, Steere clearly knowing that everything about this project is fodder for two kinds of people, fans of ultra low budget films meant to be hokey and critics to savage them, both of which he wants. I would be entirely on board with this, even supportive, but there is no joy in The VelociPastor, the joke not even remotely sustainable, even with the addition of ninjas. It wants to be controversial, taking shots at Christianity, and okay, fine, no problem there, but it just feels forced, sort of like, yeah, I guess some people could be offended. But it’s a movie about a priest who turns into a raptor.
Lastly, it wants to be a parody, but of what? And why? Fine. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Either way, the gags are, for lack of a better word, toothless. Like a bit where two henchmen laugh maniacally, on and on and on, and all you can think is, “Wow, Mike Myers did that way better.” So maybe at this point, you’re wondering about the dinosaur and hoping it’s enough to save this whole affair, but sadly, it’s barely in the movie and while the giant puppet is appropriately cheesy – like a poorly-made sports mascot – it isn’t funny, just weird. It’s an actual person in a rubber suit.
I get it. I really do. Steere is making a micro-budget comedy and I appreciate the effort. It’s entirely designed to be awful, the production, the acting, the plot, the effects, the writing … everything. However, it has no intelligence, which is crucial for a film like this, the best in the biz in on the joke and two steps ahead of the audience. The VelociPastor spends all its time playing catch up and because so, I’m sad to say, has no bite.