Movie Review: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

When going to a movie like this, you have to throw some common sense out the window.  The first trailers seemed more serious than comical, but the movie itself tried to maintain a balance between the two.  The story follows the life of Abraham Lincoln, filling in the blanks with things of a more supernatural variety.


I won’t lie, I’m not a history buff, never had the draw, especially for American history.  Compared to most nations, America is still very, very young.  Thus our history seems hardly old at all, one reason I can’t bring myself to find it all that fascinating.


In this re-telling of Lincoln’s life, the story revolves around well-known incidents, such Lincoln’s mother and son dying.  These things did indeed happen, and chronologically, the movie depicts it occurring at the right times.  Where it deviates is by turning the killer into a being, a vampire, instead of sickness.  After this, Lincoln becomes obsessed with killing vampires and is tutored by a mystery man to learn the ways of killing the undead.


The story is absurd, but if you’ve read this far, then you should have expected this.  The idea of a former president of the United States being a hunter of the undead is rather ludicrous, but the attention to detail, historically, made for a very interesting movie.  By placing events of Lincoln’s life accurately, the suspension of disbelief is fully realised.  You want to believe that this could be true, because the story makes it just believable enough to possibly be true.


Story aside, the special effects were quite impressive, especially in 3D.  I’m not usually one for 3D movies, I think the effect is rarely executed well, but in this case, it had great successes and subtle differences at varying points.  The story had a great deal of intrigue to it, but no actor truly stood out in the telling of it.  This is a very B type movie, but was enjoyable, entertaining and ultimately forgettable.