In ‘Priest,’ fear is real and the vampires don’t sparkle

Vampires have been portrayed as hunky, angst-filled beautiful people in so many TV shows and movies over the past 10 years, they’ve lost a little of their bite.

That changes with “Priest,” the feature based on the graphic novel series by Min-Woo Hyung that opens today.

There’ll be no Team Edward for these blood drinkers. The vamps in this post-apocalyptic action thriller are so bad the last pockets of humans have to live in walled cities just to survive.

A short period of calm after the Vampire War is broken when the niece (Lily Collins) of a legendary vampire fighter (Paul Bettany) is kidnapped. That leads to brutal battles with vampires.

“I was getting paid to run around and kill vampires and every day was a great day, even days where I got damaged,” Bettany says. “It just felt like a boyhood fantasy coming true.”

His acting career has been a blend of action movies, such as “Legion” and “The Da Vinci Code,” with the more cerebral roles in “The Young Victoria” and “Creation.”

To make sure he could focus all of his energy on the vampire fighting, Bettany went through the script and cut out every line of dialogue he felt wasn’t needed.

“I love words but the whole point is that this character is a man who doesn’t say much,” he explains. “Everyone else does the talking and I grunt and kill vampires.”

The vampire warrior is joined on his quiet quest by his niece’s boyfriend (Cam Gigandet), a wasteland sheriff, and a former warrior priestess (Maggie Q).

Gigandet, who played James in the definitive vampire angst film “Twilight,” wasn’t familiar with Hyung’s series when he was cast.

“We all sat down with the graphic novel and put it side-by-side with the script,” he says. “You have your visuals right there. It gave us the feel and the vibe of the story even before we started filming.”

What he found out was that unlike Bettany or Maggie Q, he didn’t have to be a good fighter. His character tends to get beaten up a lot in the books and in the film, by nasty vampires who don’t sparkle in the sunlight.