Cleric borders on nonsense for the entirety of its brief 60-minute runtime, but never fully drifts into it. It’s an artistically striking production, in a raw and underground sort of way. Its ambitions both fit into, and continually burst out, of the constraints it has to work within. Cleric doesn’t excel, or even succeed, by any standard, though it’s more in experimental execution, rather than ambition, where the film falls short.
Cleric opens with scrolling text introducing the post-apocalyptic state of the world – specifically, the conflict between the Ministry of Control (the central law enforcement body) and Heretics (genetically enhanced humans used as slaves in the off-world colonies). The Ministry of Control employs Clerics, telepathic warriors capable of seeing several seconds into the future, to combat the purportedly dangerous Heretics, which are illegal on Earth.
After the scrolling text concludes, the film’s main credits play overtop a flyover of an urban environment. The muted grey and brown contrast is sprinkled with overlaid explosion effects while a thumping techno score plays. The sequence feels like a homage to Blade Runner, although the harsh red font used for the credits detracts from the sequence, looking like a stock Windows Movie Maker overlay, cheapening the atmosphere. Still, the expansiveness, and apparent lawlessness, of this quiet, neverending sprawl is made apparent, and its prolonged duration helps counterbalance the rest of the film’s more claustrophobic setting.
The flyover sequence leads into a first-person pre-rendered flythrough of urban ruins, introducing the main antagonist, Jah, by way of monologue. Jah is a Heretic who has transported himself to Earth from off-world. There is more to his backstory, which he attempts to convey to the audience during this sequence. Unfortunately, the audio is poorly mixed, and it’s quite difficult to understand what is being said.
The environments rendered here are spectacular, being a collection of machinery, sewers systems, and decaying infrastructure, all viewed through a flickering overlay with high colour contrast. They’re quite obviously CGI, but as they are being used as a tool to complement Jah’s introduction, the sequence succeeds in previewing the world the way in which Jah experiences it.
The following sequence moves outdoors, flying through the city’s horrific state of ruin via a series of parallax image cutouts. The introduction is almost reminiscent of a circa-2000s-era CD-ROM game, with pre-rendered CGI and slide-show images used to construct the setting and atmosphere before dropping players into gameplay sequences with considerably less visual fidelity.
Five minutes in, we get our first glimpse of Jah and the film’s actual sets and costumes. Jah is strapped to a table, convulsing as electrical charges are pumped into him repeatedly while a score of ECG beeps and drum beats berate the audience. Near fluorescent blood coats Jah’s chest as the torture continues, and he is captured from multiple angles in rapid succession, sometimes with the filter switching to black and white. While the fake blood isn’t at all convincing, it could be argued its bright tint suits Jah, considering his genetic enhancements.
Though effective in communicating the pain Jah is being subjected to, the scene lasts a full three minutes (out of the movie’s hour runtime). It’s the first scene with an actual actor present too, but due to its repetitiousness, I’d imagine most viewers call it quits here.
After Jah’s jolting introduction, the film cuts to him being hunted by a squad of “cleaners” and their Cleric, “Gia”. The first of these cleaners is introduced via framing against a pitch-black backdrop. Wearing protective goggles, a trenchcoat, and armed with an assault rifle, the soldier perfectly fits the mold of a cyberpunk gestapo. He looks around the black void, ushering his subjects forward as they begin their hunt through urban ruins.
Jah easily disposes of the cleaners, ambushing them at every turn. There are some bits of special effects here, like bullet impact points and muzzle flashes, though the action is cut together so randomly that it is difficult to ascertain who is hunting who at any given moment.
Gia, however, presents more of a challenge. Jah and Gia’s fight is mostly shot from the side, as if the two were characters in a fighting game, and is in near constant slow motion. The choreography is ill-rehearsed, providing about as much thrill as Jah’s gyrating electrocution sequence. However, the scene does serve its purpose in distinguishing Clerics from regular soldiers. Furthermore, it gives Samara, the protagonist, a reason to return to her post as a Cleric upon the revelation that Gia (her former lover) was killed by Jah.
While these first several sequences are admittedly sloppy, Cleric becomes far more engaging, and dare I say poetic, from this point on. Fifteen minutes into the film we hear the first bit of dialogue when Samara is called back into duty from her desolate life. Here, we see that the “functional” end of society isn’t much better than The Below – lawless subterranean ruins where gangs and scavengers live. The Ministry of Control’s headquarters are dusty, empty, and rundown. Aside from their floating AR screens and cheap suits, there is barely any more glamore to life on the right side of the law than the poverty of her living conditions, or of those in the ruins below the city.
With her face painted and dressed in the Cleric garb of a long black trench coat, pleather vest, and fishnet stockings, Samara makes her way across the Wastelands – the ashen ruins of former cities. This short pre-rendered greenscreen sequence is an impressive bit of worldbuilding, considering the rest of the film takes place in cramped, claustrophobia-inducing spaces built of rebar and concrete. The set design for The Below is raw in an almost ‘found’ sense. David R Williams has done an incredible job of making these ruins seem never ending, sprawling deep below the surface of the earth.
Upon reaching The Below, Samara meets the Rat Shaman – a guide of sorts. Here, Samara uses her psychic abilities to search for Jah, and we see that the black and white filter actually coincides with her use of powers.
The contrast of light and dark in the underground is often well choreographed. Samara’s trench coat, for example, makes her look like a phantom floating through the darkness, while Jah’s long dreads emphasize his movement through the dark.
The supporting cast’s costumes, like The Rat Shaman and Chainsaw Howler, are well constructed, looking like genuine artefacts of the scrap resources available in The Below. The Clerics’ makeup and design, however, look a bit silly in the context of their job. Samara’s weaponry is laughably cheap too, consisting of a plastic shield and crossbar stick. Considering how little these items are used in comparison to the much more practical guns at her disposal, not to mention how much more difficult it is to choreograph a melee fight scene as opposed to a shootout, it’s a wonder they included them at all.
The remainder of the film’s fight scenes are of the same quality of the first – that is, painfully choreographed and ill-rehered. The final battle, however, does push the actors further than any sequence prior. The shootout sees the actors roll, jump, and dodge as they exchange fire in slow motion, making it considerably more exciting than the rest of the film.
There is plenty to criticize in Cleric: poor sound balance, awkward makeup and costume designs, and a sparsely developed plot. Yet, Cleric is undeniably an immersive, even memorable, film. It’s unapologetic cyber-junk – a movie with almost nothing to actually say, but no less enjoyable because of it. Had Cleric been a comic book instead of a film it would have been pure 1990s bad girl or Heavy Metal fare. It’s the perfect sort of beautiful desolation, reminiscent of something born of an Albert Pyun production. The thumping techno soundtrack and set design are interesting. Shots are often experimental, riding the line between amateur and artistic. It genuinely left me with a sense of wonder about the grander universe, and for an hour-long assembly of cliches made on a shoestring budget, that’s something.