The minute I first saw the trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I thought “this is either going to be the best movie ever made, or the worst.” Well, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter isn’t really quite either… and kind of both. But despite my better judgement, I enjoyed the hell outta this over the top cheese fest of a movie. Based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel of the same name, ALVH is just ridiculous, schlocky fun from start to finish. The movie’s tone is painfully serious, which in a way made it all the more campy fun for me, if that makes any sense. The filmmakers, in going out of their way to play everything so seriously, it just made it all sillier. For me though, this was a good thing.
The movie starts in 1818, when Abe Lincoln is nine years old. His father is working off a debt (we never find out for what) to a cruel slave owner named William Barts,who is beating Abe’s best friend Will Johnson, an African American boy about Abe’s age. The real William Johnson was a free person of color, as they were then called, but the movie suggests that he was a slave that belonged to William Barts. The Lincoln family (minus Abe’s sister Sarah, who seemingly doesn’t exist in this movie) stand up to Barts and defend Will Johnson, and in retaliation Barts kills Nancy Lincoln, Abe’s mother. Abe vows vengeance, and cut to several years later, and our now adult Abe (Benjamin Walker) is ready to do just that. Except Abe doesn’t know that Barts is really a vampire, and has his ass handed to him when he tries to exact his sweet revenge.
Abe is saved by a man named Henry Sturges, played by the always charming Dominic Cooper (Howard Stark in Captain America) a professional vampire hunter. Sturges agrees to train Abe to be a proficient vampire killer, and gives him the low down on vampire history. See, vamps have been coming to America for centuries it seems, and the slave trade has given them an endless supply of disposable humans to use and then feed on. Its actually kind of clever. These vampires have overcome their aversion to sunlight, can turn invisible, and have a serious aversion to silver. There are also some other twists to vampire lore (some which come from actual bits of folklore Hollywood usually ignores) but none are as insulting as sparkling in the sun or anything like that. There are a few other twists and turns that I won’t give away, but none that will surprise anyone who has seen a movie before.
And so begins what amounts to as the main plot of the movie, which follows Abraham Lincoln from young adulthood to President, all the while killing as many vamps as he can on the side. But at least he does so in fun, creatively bloody ways (it should be noted that vampire blood in this movie is black, not red, probably so as much can be spilled as possible while avoiding the dreaded NC-17 rating. A creative solution I’d say) Abe also woos and marries Mary Todd (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in a pretty boring romantic subplot that clearly also bored the director, who only spends as much time on that aspect as he has to, then gets along to some more slo-mo acrobatics and more killing. I’m ok with this. It turns out that vampires are backing the South due to their stance on slavery (remember, endless food supply) The vampire leader is named Adam (Rufus Sewell) and it is implied that he’s not only the oldest bloodsucker in America, but the first vampire period. Sewell does a good enough job, but he’s never quite as bad ass I want him to be. But like a lot of things in this movie, he’s good enough.
Russian director Timur Bekmambetov has only made one other English language film before this one, 2008’s Wanted. Like Wanted, ALVH has tons of slow-mo action scenes, and it is again clear that action, action and more action is all he really cares about. Again, this is not a complaint. Some of the action is spectacular, and some is just exhausting. A lot of the movie is dumb, but fun dumb. Unlike some other movies this summer that are equally dumb, this one doesn’t pretend to be about anything grander. Tim Burton’s a producer on this movie, but I think it is in name only; none of this movie has the Burton feel to it (probably for the best) Having seen not only Wanted, but Bekmambetov’s Russian movies Night Watch and Day Watch, this movie is clearly all him from start to finish.
So much of this movie makes no sense at all– for instance, Abe learns how to be this amazing killing machine in one quick 80’s style montage scene (I was half expecting some hair metal power chords to kick in) Abe has no powers to speak of–he’s not super strong like Buffy or half vampire like Blade, so he shouldn’t be able to do or survive half the shit this movie puts him through. Every action scene bends the laws of logic and sometimes even physics. And yet…the ridiculousness of it all just makes the whole thing more enjoyable to me. It just seems everyone involved just wanted to make a B movie with an actual budget, and they succeeded at this. ALVH is almost never boring and always fun, and I just can’t help but think that all the badness was intentional. Benjamin Walker plays Abraham Lincoln with such a straight face, that it actually ends up makes everything more campy….and I kinda dug that. Winking at the camera constantly would have been too easy, doing it this way just made me chuckle more. I should note, there are a few nods to previous vampire films here as well…the vampire’s look when in “kill mode” is to have this giant elongated jaw, kind of like the original Fright Night, and main vampire baddie Adam’s lair is the same plantation where Louis and Lestat lived in Interview with the Vampire (Oak Alley in Louisiana) And the way that vampires avoid sunlight is a lift from the original Blade. None of these tidbits will win most people over, but they put enough of a smile on my face for me to give this flick a few extra brownie points.
Despite the oodles of dumb in this flick, I had a blast watching it. This is the kind of movie where you’re either gonna be on board with it from the get go, or you’re just not. I imagine a lot of people reading this will fall under the “not” category. Right now as I write this review, the Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 32%. But I find so many of these reviews somewhat baffling…one major newspaper says “Oh, what it could have been. The film dances around solid themes: racism, nationhood, the embodiment of evil vs. the spirit of good.” Another even bigger paper’s review says “In general, the movie’s attitude toward recorded history is that of a pimp toward a hooker.” Does anyone really want “solid themes” and a reverent attitude towards history in a movie called Abraham Licoln, Vampire Hunter? I sure as Hell didn’t, I just wanted overly bloody cheestastic fun. Sure, occasionally a silly title holds content with suprisingly more depth (Buffy the Vampire Slayer anyone?) but sometimes it’s okay to just get exactly what you’re expecting, and just enjoy it for what it is. And I did. And if you go in with the right mind set, you might too.
