With a title like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, you know what you’re signing up for. Or so I thought. I walked in ready for a goofy, bloody popcorn night. Instead I got a movie that takes a man axing vampires way too seriously.
The setup is fun. Young Abe watches a vampire kill his mother, swears revenge, and trains under a mysterious mentor named Henry Sturgess. Dominic Cooper plays Henry and steals every scene he’s in. Rufus Sewell is a blast as Adam, the head vampire, and he’s clearly having the time of his life being evil.
Benjamin Walker gives Lincoln everything he’s got. He sells the fights and twirls that axe like he was born holding it. The problem is the script gives him little else to do. Mary Elizabeth Winstead gets it worse. Her Mary Todd mostly stands around waiting for a scene.
Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) tries to save things with action, and sometimes it works. A fight in the middle of a horse stampede is so dumb and so wild I couldn’t stop grinning. But the slow motion wears thin fast, and the CGI swings from decent to rough within a single scene.
The real killer is the tone. A premise this silly needs to have fun with itself. Zombieland knows this and leans into the joke. This one plays it straight, drops a cheesy one-liner, then lurches back to grim violence. Who is it for? I’m not sure the movie knows either.
There’s a great B-movie buried in here, but it never claws its way out. Watch the horse chase online and call it a night.
See Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter on TMDB
