The Real Story Is Much, MUCH Better

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter"

Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov

Written By: Seth Grahame-Smith 

Starring: Benjamin Walker, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Dominic Cooper

Rated R

105 Minutes



Never before have I so vastly overestimated my desire to see a film.  Especially one called "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."  Knowing what I know about today's youth and how the public school system fails in teaching them, do we really need something like Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires to make history more enjoyable?  A much more entertaining film on Lincoln is Robert Redford's "The Conspirator," which has easily more tension than this one, and wouldn't ya know it, is based on actual history.

I will get the one compliment I can pay "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" out of the way right now: its star, Benjamin Walker, is a pretty engaging presence who actually looks somewhat like Lincoln, especially in the film's late passages.  Even more, he uncannily resembles a young Liam Neeson, and perhaps for that fact alone, he should have a future ahead of him.  Maybe he didn't know what he was getting into signing on for this picture.  I have not read the source novel it's based on, but my unwise assumption was that it was some sort of farcical and comedic take given the title.  Indeed, if this were something more akin to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" I may have let my guard down more.  Alas, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" takes itself so seriously, that its re-telling of American History is unforgivably offensive.  To attribute the civil war to a conflict between vampires and humans is wrecklessly disrespectful to the men who fought in it.  The motivations of the Confederate soldiers were much more complex in reality than history would lead us to believe; and to simplify that and literally demonize the south by casting them as undead bloodsuckers is irresponsible filmmaking. 

Not that the vampires in this movie are all that terrifying.  As far as I could tell, they are capable only of screaming in humans' faces and scrambling about on train tops and horses.  One of the vampires (Marton Csokas) kills young Abraham's mother, and he devotes his life to the pursuit of vanquishing them.  A mysterious drifter named Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper) takes Lincoln under his wing with promises of undead justice.  Pretty soon Abraham is wielding his trusty axe and slicing and dicing his way to the Presidency.  And what else can I tell you?  There are brief moments where the movie actually pauses to acknowledge real events in Lincoln's history, such as the first time he meets Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).  His first foray into politics is muddled in some sort of middle act montage, I think, and does not resonate well.  Therein lies the problem.  The film would have us believe that Abraham Lincoln is defined by his lust for vengeance and that his political foundation was just a conveniant secondary choice to serve as the means to an end.

As directed by Timur Bekmambetov, whose "Wanted" was pretty good, the movie suffers from an over-abundance of slow-motion sequences that exist primarily to show you that something is actually happening.  The full-speed action is so disorienting that you would have no clue what is going on unless it slowed down and got right in your face.  So it does.  The editing is also problematic.  In an hour and forty two minutes, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" attempts to account for Lincoln's entire life, right up until the night he was assasinated.  Thankfully, the movie ends before he arrives at Ford's Theatre.  I'd hate to see what sort of supernatural beast they'd blame that tragic event on.  Werewolf, perhaps? 

I will not waste any more time trying to convince you not to see this movie.  It spends its limited, but still unbearable running time convincing you of that on its own.  There was a small portion of me that really wanted to enjoy the concept of something like this; but I totally misunderstood the nature of that concept.  "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is an atrocity of movie making that is without a single redeeming quality outside of its lead actor.  Cast aside all the grievences violating  Mr. Lincoln's history, and what's left is actually a pretty boring and benign CGI fest.  If that sounds like your thing, then by all means.  But when Willie Lincoln's death was attributed to a vampire bite, that's when I wanted to take an axe to the screen.