Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter {Movie Review}

The story starts with young Abraham Lincoln coming to the aid of childhood friend Will Johnson, and bringing down the wrath of his father’s employer, Jack Barts, who we later find out is…a vampire! The vampire slips into the home of the Lincolns in the middle of the night and delivers a bite to Abraham’s mother Nancy. The bite makes her appear in the morning, to be dying of an unknown illness. The prepubescent Lincoln was awake and (unbeknownst to the assailant) saw the whole thing. Barts becomes the focus of Lincoln’s hatred from that day on and we flash forward to Lincoln as a young man seeking vengeance. It is at this point that Lincoln finally sees and understands what Barts is, when he is rescued from death-by-vampire by a mysterious man named Henry. Henry tells Lincoln the truth about vampires in America and teaches him to become a lean, mean vampire-axing machine.

The movie continues on showing many highlights of Lincoln’s life but attributes the reasons behind them to be vampire-related. Did you know that the Battle of Gettysburg was won because Lincoln used the Underground Railroad to smuggle silver-laced weapons to the Union Army? Well, how else would they beat an army of vampire Rebels?!

There were quite a few disappointments with this movie. I’m not sure if it was the fault of bad writing, bad editing, or some combination of the two but it seems to be missing several details pertinent to the flow of the movie. Will returns to Lincoln in adulthood and gets inadvertently dragged into the Lincoln/vampire feud yet he can inexplicably fight the supernatural beings as well as Lincoln who received special training to do so. Henry makes a vague comment about vampires adapting to daylight but never explains what they do. Several small details lead you to believe they use sunscreen yet scenes where humans are turned in broad daylight and don’t die conflict with the theory. This one large inconsistency was just one of the many ways in which the movie makes you feel like they took an “I’ll-follow-basic-vampire-rules-when-it’s-convenient” approach to the vampire behavior. Some of the footage in the last-hurrah battle scene suggests they were running low on money, with special effects that would be mind-blowing — if it were 1987 and not 2012. One final issue I had is that they attribute the death of Abraham’s son Willie to a vampire attack. I’m just not comfortable with the factual death of a child being cheapened with fantasy.

Overall my feelings leaving the theater were mixed. I loved that Rufus Sewell was in the movie; he’s so good at playing a fantastic jerk. The story entertained me all the way through but the inconsistency made the experience less than grand. I’m not sorry to have seen it, I just feel the presentation promised a little more quality than it delivered. Still, there is a place in my heart for B movies. It will appear in the movie collections of people known to have “unique” tastes and rest on the shelf right next to Clash of the Titans and Starship Troopers. Ok, yes, I’ll be that person, but I won’t pay full price for it!