Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter tells a fictional story of a young Abraham and his secret life as a vampire killer. Before he became president, Lincoln killed numerous vampires in the 1800’s while studying to become a lawyer. When he was just a young boy, he witnessed his mother getting attacked by a vampire, and vowed to seek revenge against her attacker. Years later he would meet a man named Henry who would teach him not to just seek revenge against one blood sucker, but instead join forces with him in eradicating the species once and for all. As years would past, Lincoln would become President, but still have to deal with the presence of vampires in America. He would go down as being the history’s greatest vampire killer as well as our greatest president.
This movie was based on a graphic novel by Seth Grahame-Smith that came out in 2010. I had heard about this project getting the green light for production and I have to admit it peaked my interest, especially when I heard it would be made by Tim Burton. Along with Tim, director Timur Bekmambetov, who directed the movie Wanted had also signed on to direct. Timur has a good eye for action, and if anything, I knew this movie would have some amazing fight scenes. I have to say that I was right on in assuming that the action would be worth seeing. This film had some really great fight scenes. The story on the other hand, started to become too fictional towards the last half of the film. I was able to go with the premise of Abraham Lincoln having a secret life as a monster killer as a young man, but when the story started to incorporate real historical events with the presence of vampires, then it became just stupid and ludicrous.
The film actual had the Civil War between the North and South being a war of Northern men versus Southern vampire slave owners. Yeah you read it correct, the Southern slave owners were mostly vampires, and they were feeding on the black slaves. Now, not to say that only blacks were victims of these blood thirsty attacks, but they were the main resource for the vampires, because they were slaves and were owned by one particular head vampire named Adam. He was so named, because he was the father of all the other vampires in existence. I also didn’t like that the movie actually followed Lincoln’s rise to president, along with all of the great speeches he made while running for the position. The film actually has the North winning the Civil War, because they were able to get silver to defeat the vampires. Yes, in this movie, silver kills vampires. With the story aside, the cinematography and special effects were really, really good. The added 3D, was also used pretty well in some of the action scenes. If the fight scenes weren’t so entertaining, I probably would have hated this movie. Even the dialog, was kind of boring. I gave this movie 1½ bites out of 4. If it wasn’t for the great action in this movie, it would have easily been a flop. The movie is 1 hour and 45 minutes. Its rated R for violence throughout and brief sexuality. The film was directed Tim Bekmambetov. It was distributed by 2oth Century Fox Distribution.
“I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down…” – Abraham Lincoln.
Next movie reviewed: TBD
