Karl Urban has starred in five horror movies throughout his long career, but which (if any) of these spooky efforts from Dredd, New Zealand actor Karl Urban is a screen veteran who has earned the critical recognition he’s currently enjoying as the leading man of superhero satire The Boys. Like most actors with many credits to their name, Urban also has a mixed bag of horror roles he has starred in.
Many actors appear in some embarrassing early horrors before moving on from the genre once they’ve gotten a few roles to their name, whereas others like Priest.
Of Urban’s horror efforts, two are action-horror hybrids that combine supernatural monsters with gunfights, chase sequences, and heavy artillery. One is a traditional haunted house tale (albeit one set on an ocean liner), and another is a tense kidnap thriller remade from a cult '70s hit. Finally, Urban’s earliest horror effort is a strange indie movie from his homeland and one of his earliest lead roles. So, how do the actor’s horror movies rank in comparison with one another?
Ghost Ship (2002)
It can't be denied that 2002’s sea-set horror effort Ghost Ship has a fantastic opening scene. The rest of the “haunted house at sea” is dour and disposable, but the outrageously gory opening offers a stomach-turning scene of mass slaughter that will stick with even hardened genre fans. Unfortunately, a great opening does not equal a great movie, and Urban is given little to do in this otherwise familiar horror effort. When a crew of marine salvagers comes across an ocean liner abandoned decades earlier, they are inevitably picked off one by one by vengeful ghosts until one of the cast turns out to be connected to the doomed vessel. Predictable and scare-free, this Thirteen Ghosts.
And Soon The Darkness (2010)
The best thing that can be said for 2010’s And Soon The Darkness is that the twisty mystery thriller does improve on the 1970 original of the same name. Set in Argentina, this forgettable but able kidnap thriller sees Karl Urban Amber Heard as the pair play tourists searching for their kidnapped traveling partners (Urban’s girlfriend and Heard’s friend). The action is somewhat slow to get going and lacks the visceral punch of its contemporaries like the gorier superior horror movie to Ghost Ship.
Priest (2011)
In 2010, director Scott Stewart abandoned an angelic character played by Paul Bettany in a roadside diner in the middle of nowhere and left the heroic messenger of god to battle demons as bemused patrons looked on. A year after Legion was roundly panned by critics, Stewart made the irable decision to ignore their advice and produce an even weirder follow-up, Priest. Priest notably does not see Bettany reprise the role of Archangel Michael, but he instead plays the eponymous Priest, a vampire-slaying veteran of a centuries-long conflict between bloodsuckers and humans. Urban is the villainous Black Hat, a vampire-human hybrid who (spoilers) was once a priest like Bettany, and is now trying to off all his fellow warriors to end the war.
Priest is pure hokum, and its vampires-versus-humans war is about as compelling as Daybreakers, and fans could find a worse way to spend an afternoon.
Doom (2005)
horror video game movie adaptations rely on atmosphere more than anything else, and Doom is just not a game soaked in slow-burn dread. It’s an explosive action-thriller and no movie can recreate the fun of blasting monsters in the first person, although credit to the 2005 movie, it does try. Karl Urban is the best thing about this middling adventure as leading man Reaper, and Dwayne Johnson offers a typically charismatic ing turn. Ultimately, Doom may not be able to replicate the fun of the titular title, but the fast-paced action and great leads make up for the lack of serious scares.
The Irrefutable Truth about Demons (2000)
Karl Urban’s first horror movie role is also his least-known, which is a shame as it is also the actor’s best genre effort yet. 2000’s trippy horror mystery The Irrefutable Truth About Demons combines elements of the horror movie Jacob’s Ladder, the similarly underseen The Ninth Gate, and a touch of Arlington Road’s overwhelming sense of paranoid dread to make a memorably creepy final product. The story follows a professor who studies religion and gets more than he bargained for when a Satanic cult seems to start ruining his life, but nothing is that simple in this hallucinatory effort from director Glenn Standring. Urban is superb in the lead, alternately gruff and shattered, and the success of The Irrefutable Truth About Demons centers largely around the actor’s ability to sell a convicting breakdown. Fortunately, Urban is more than up to the task, making this his strongest horror movie so far.
