The film uncovers a dark secret in U.S. history. Before he entered politics, the 16th president of the United States devoted himself to vampire extermination. Not surprisingly, the Lincoln we meet in this action-oriented adventure isn’t a mirror image of the Lincoln of history books, unless you happened to be exposed to texts depicting honest Abe wielding a silver-tipped ax and acting very much like a summer-movie action hero. It’s Abe vs. one vicious vampire after another as the movie plies its way through quasi-historical waters. It all started when the young Abraham watches his mother die an early death and was a victim of a vampire. Mr. Lincoln wants revenge. Motivated by vengeance and a desire to battle the dark side, Lincoln makes the ax his weapon of choice because of early days spent splitting rails. The story follows Lincoln from his boyhood to the presidency with vampires linking different periods in the leader’s life. Turns out vampires were everywhere in the decades before the Civil War. They masqueraded as bankers, pharmacists, ministers, infesting unsuspecting human communities.
Benjamin Walker makes a stalwart if not entirely prepossessing adult Lincoln, a character surrounded by a large supporting cast that includes Dominic Cooper (as a good vampire); Rufus Sewell (as the movie’s very bad vampire); Anthony Mackie (as a black childhood pal of Lincoln grown into an ally in the fight against slavery); Mary Elizabeth Winstead (as Mary Todd Lincoln); Marton Csokas (as Lincoln’s sworn enemy) and many more.
The movie plays like another big-screen comic book, sketching its story in the kind of broad strokes that make nuance about as welcome as silver bullets at a vampire convention. The film will be accepted by most moviegoers as escapist entertainment won’t find much to savor. It lacks cleverness and imagination, simply fuses Lincoln’s and the Civil War’s historical outlines with horror- and action-movie clichés.
Shallow re-creations of his Gettysburg battlefield address and signing of the Emancipation Proclamation don’t grant this version of Lincoln wisdom or gravity or courage that feels genuine.
The film didn’t live up to my expectations for something preposterously grand, but it provided a fair measure of unintended chuckles and a bit incidental fun as it tried to swell to mythic proportions. Being a period piece shot in colorful Louisiana doesn’t even help the film. With its muted, affected color palette and mediocre set design, the film looks more like a mid-priced TV movie than a major motion picture.
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was directed by Timur Bekmambetov and is rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence. It runs 1 hour and 45 minutes. The film was written by Seth Grahtame-Smith.
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