Like plenty of other films, this one screams its comic book origins from the rafters. It looks like the visual approach in the source material had a very specific cyberpunk edge, one director Scott Stewart has evidently tried to emulate here to the letter.

It's the far future in a world where vampires exist and have been at war with humans for aeons, destroying the ecology of the Earth until a balance was finally achieved by the Church, which took control of the last remnants of humanity, becoming an increasingly oppressive government as it enclosed them into vast, steaming and clanking walled cities in endless deserts.

It also trained and established a new class of vampire warrior, the Priests, who hunted down and dispatched most of the vampires and restricted the rest into reservations far from humanity. We see one such battle in a vampire stronghold in a cavernous cave in the opening scene.

Years later, with the vampire menace at its lowest, the Priests are disbanded, leaving them bereft and unable to reintegrate into society. One of them, called only 'Priest' (Paul Bettany) tries to eke out a living but is soon called back into service. Some settlers live outside the walls to escape the edicts of the church, and when a remote farmhouse is attacked in the middle of the night, it leaves the young Lucy (Lily Collins) taken captive after her parents are slaughtered.

Lucy's male suitor, Hicks (Cam Gidganet) seeks Priest out, telling him what happened and asking for his help in tracking down and rescuing Lucy. Of course Priest has a personal tie to the family as well that we only find out about towards the end, but it means the stoic soldier can't help but agree.

He accompanies Hicks across the wastelands in pursuit of the girl (and with a score to settle), from a disused petroleum plant to an abandoned city, all while the Church, who have wind of Priest's quest, send his former colleagues after him (with another personal connection you don't have to squint too hard to see a mile off).

They're going to learn the truth about the state of the vampire race, and Priest is going to come face to face with Black Hat (Karl Urban), a friend and teammate he lost in the vampire purge years back that we saw at the beginning of the movie and who wasn't killed after all but has morphed into their leader, all of it culminating in a train crammed with vampires speeding towards the city where the undead intend to finish humanity off once and for all.

There's an effective sense of worldbuilding, even if it all seems taken straight from the pages of the comic or has been designed and shot as the basis for a later videogame tie in (something to remember when it comes to critics complaining about the script and characters). It borrows elements from all over – from The Matrix to Batman, Underworld and The Crow to The Fifth Element and everything in between. Bettany doesn't have much to do but scowl and occasionally fight, and all in all you've seen it a hundred times before, done better.