Based on the book by Seth Grahame-Smith, who’s also written the screenplay, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter posits an alternative history in which the 16th President of the United States was by night a hunter of vampires who threaten to take the country over as their own.
Right off the bat this is as about as ludicrous as ideas get (just look at that title) and the film is suitably ridiculous in pretty much every way. The trouble is that it plays everything with such a straight-face that it’s silly but doesn’t really know it’s silly, the often laughable dialogue delivered in a fashion that suggests the filmmakers don’t know just how cheesy it is.
Glazed in CGI to the point of distraction, the movie never delivers the sort of visceral action thrills that were clearly intended, cheapened by an over reliance on the CG to try and bring to life the various axe-swinging human vs vampire set-pieces which feel like they’ve been pulled straight out of a video game cut-scene. Save for a couple instances of invention here and there the action falls flat and feels lifeless with nary a sense of jeopardy or danger to be had because everything looks so fake.
As is the case with most blockbusters which are presented in 3D, the added dimension in fact adds nothing of real value to the proceedings here, only there as an excuse to hurl axes and spray gore (of which there is a surprising amount) out of the screen which is an utterly pointless distraction. Also, it’s a pretty dark film anyway with a lot of the scenes set at night so the infuriatingly darkening 3D only adds insult to injury in that respect.
As a whole it’s not even interesting as a sort of alternative history lesson, the “what if?” question that mixes fact with fiction in the truest sense of the word holding more potential than the execution is able to deliver. We do at least have a capable lead in Benjamin Walker, who is a newcomer to being the big leading man but is very watchable and likeable as this fantasy version of the titular President. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for some of the other actors, who range from the miscast like Anthony Mackie and Rufus Sewell to the completely wasted like Dominic Cooper and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the latter of which has some of the most thankless dialogue in a blockbuster for quite some time.
Under the direction of Timur Bekmambetov – the man behind the ridiculous but still super-fun Wanted and the messy but interesting Night/Day Watch movies – and produced by Tim Burton, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter offers the occasional silly bit of fun and is relentless in its ridiculousness. However, it’s not the fact that it’s silly that’s the problem but rather that it doesn’t seem to realise it. Overall this is an unsatisfying mess made up of clunky pacing, too much CGI and criminally for a film of this type, lifeless and repetitive action. Skip it.
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