Film Review: "ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER"

Yes, you can believe the idiotic commercials you’ve seen recently marketing a film called “ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER” - it does exist. Yes, Tim Burton signed on as a producer. And yes… it is as bad as it sounds.

In fact, it’s so bad that it’s far past the point of even being camp. Instead of, say, trying to impose upon viewers the widely accepted theory that Abraham Lincoln was bisexual, this abominable piece of trash takes the drama to a whole different level and wants us to believe that in his spare time, our 16^th President was out and about the industrialized United States in the middle of the night hunting vampires to get revenge for the death of his mother – who was murdered by a Confederate vampire when he was a young boy.

So… before all the negative aspects of this film are mentioned, let’s go over the positive ones – because they are minimal. Truthfully, it was cut together quite well. Many of the edited sequences may make you jump out of your seat because they are in fact frightening, and there aren’t two shots in the film that are choppily connected together, making it flow rather well at 100 minutes. For the acting, Anthony Mackie plays a supporting character (and vampire hunter) named Will sporting a strong southern accent, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Mary Todd Lincoln is, well, pretty.

Other than that, “VAMPIRE HUNTER” is just a horrible film. It tries to connect itself to 4^th grade history class through CGI imagery depicting the Industrial Revolution and the Battle of Gettysburg and ends on one of the most vomit-inducing sequences in the history of cinema, where Lincoln’s death at the theater is foreshadowed after he is made out to look like an invincible vampire killer. This is just the beginning of the list of many loathsome aspects of this film. I can’t begin to elaborate on the distressing pain that went through my body when I realized that director Timur Bekmambetov was using this joke of a work of art to create a metaphor comparing the pre-Civil War era southern Confederate slave owners to the ravenous corporate executives (the 1%) of today’s United States.

If a movie is that blatantly politically one-sided, it should not take itself seriously – but “VAMPIRE HUNTER” does take itself seriously and fails miserably at being anything worth any value. It was out of control to the point where, 15 minutes in, you’re completely aware that it is by no means disguising itself as something bigger, you know it’s pure American junk entertainment. It’s a true disgrace to the history of this country, insinuating that one of our most beloved Presidents hunted vampires in his free time and used politics as a way to gain control over these nocturnal beasts. That being said, the vampires don’t even look cool. They look more like wolves – maybe Bekmambetov saw one of the films from the “TWILIGHT” series and confused Team Edward and Team Jacob. Regardless of the director’s surely childish inspiration, “ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER” has nothing at all intelligent to say and is nothing at all worthwhile to see.  This will surely be up there with the competitors for the worst movie of 2012.