The VelociPastor at first glance appears to be one of those fun and over-the-top monster movies that audiences love to watch simply for its ridiculousness, like (Sharknado}. While the movie itself is certainly ridiculous and over-the-top, The Velocipastor ultimately forgets the most important element that made Sharknado such a huge hit: the fun.
The Velocipastor is filled to the brim with horrible and amaetur-ish cinematography, even worse editing and bland acting. Even most student films have better cinematography and editing, making The Velocipastor look like a movie with no budget made by a high-schooler that has never touched a camera before in his life, which has us scratching our heads as to where the $35,000 budget actually went. Many shots of the movie feature the camera moving around aimlessly while zoomed in for no apparent reason, and the editing has more fades than Star Wars: A New Hope.
Narratively, The Velocipastor is still a big mess. While the main essence of the story is certainly present, although incredibly basic, simply following a priest who gains transformative powers and realizes his calling is to fight evil, the movie is filled with numerous subplots that either don’t make sense or don’t add anything to the story at all. For example, about halfway through the movie, a five minute flashback occurs following the history of Father Stewart, the mentor figure of the movie. The flashback reveals Father Stewart’s time serving in “the war” (though the war is unspecified and certainly is not Vietnam as the set looked nothing like the geography of that country). The flashback occurs abruptly and ends abruptly, having no effect on the rest of the movie whatsoever. None of the characters introduced in this flashback return, and it reveals nothing about the character’s motivation or actions. The movie is ridden with ridiculous moments like this that add nothing to the story and simply waste the viewer’s time.
Related: First VelociPastor Clip Has a Priest Struggling to Contain the Dinosaur Within
Another serious issue with the movie is that it is simply full of stereotypes, with depth being absent from beginning to end of this movie. For example, though the main character Doug (Gregory James Cohan) is a priest and a lot of the movie has to do with Catholicism, it’s incredibly clear that the writer/director did absolutely no research on the religion or how priests actually act. In fact, a flashback even reveals that the main character did not attend a seminary to become ordained like actual priests, but instead simply went to “Priest College.” The movie also has a number of racial stereotypes, with every Chinese character in the movie wearing outdated and arguably offensive attire, and one of the main characters referring to a character from China simply as “that Chinese.”
While it is clear at times that The Velocipastor is attempting to be a parody, it takes itself way too seriously to even come close to being an actual parodic film. Though a few moments show the humorous side of the filmmakers (such as a group of ninjas crying over the character they just attacked, or a character exploding in a massive gush of blood), the majority of the movie has no comedic or parodic moments, and instead is just truly painful to sit through. At its best moments, The Velocipastor does stand true as “so bad, it’s good” movie, being worth a chuckle or two, but these moments are rare in this drawn out and unbearable flick.
The movie can’t even live up to its name The Velocipastor, as the main character is Catholic, and hence would be called a “priest” rather a “pastor” and the creature he turns into looks a lot more like a miniature Tyrannosaurus-Rex than a Velociraptor. In short, this independent movie from Wild Eye Releasing is not worth watching for the few laughs it actually has. It’s barely even worth the score 3/10. There are plenty of better “so bad, it’s good” options out there to watch than this pathetic attempt at hopping on the “bad movie” bandwagon.
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