ABRAHAM LINCOLN : VAMPIRE HUNTER - archive from 16th August 2012.

Saw 'Abraham Lincoln : Vampire Hunter' last night. Part fact, part fiction, all action . . . or is it! This is Hollywood after all - so it must be true! 

History prefers legends to men, so the story goes, and we see a young Abe at the age of nine witness the death of his mother at the hands (or fangs) of a vampire. Fast forward ten years and the young man Abe (Benjamin Walker) crosses paths with that same Vampire again and this time unsuccessfully tries to send that blood sucking menace to oblivion. Making the acquaintance of Vampire expert Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper), Abe is taught the ways of Vampire slaying, and so during the daytime Abe studies law while working in a shop, and by night rids the world of select Vampires that are up to no good!

As time progresses Abe meets and marries Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and when elected as the 16th President of the good ol' U.S.ofA he soon realises that the Vampire hordes are supporting the southern Confederate Army against the north. At the same time Lincoln is seeking to abolish the slave trade, but he is warned not to interfere as slaves are an important food source to the Vampires who up to now have existed quietly, peacefully and in a relatively controlled manner with slaves as a regular and seemingly never ending source of sustenance. But, siting behind this is a plot to populate the US with the undead, and overthrow the living.

And so he mounts his own campaign to dispense with those pesky southern Vampires armed with his knowledge and experience from previous years and in doing so he slices & dices, slashes & smashes his way through body parts with gushing arcs of thick black Vampiric blood rendered in glorious slo-mo. 

With a budget of US$70M, Russian Director Timur Bekmambetov delivers an entertaining romp, with reasonable set pieces, obvious CGI, a largely unknown cast through Abe's early years as Vampire menace to politics to Presidency to that fateful visit to the Theatre. It made about US$120M at the global box-office, so we are unlikely to see any kind of sequel to this Seth Grahame-Smith adapted novel - which is hardly surprising either given what we know of Lincoln's demise that night at the Theatre at the hands of John Wilkes-Booth. Entertaining enough, but you can catch it now on the blu-ray and check out the extra features that are sure to enhance the make-up, effects, wire-work and fight sequences all the more!

-Steve, at Odeon Online-