abraham lincoln vampire hunter movie reviews

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"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject — unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater. It's also a more entertaining movie than I remotely expected. Yes, Reader, I went expecting to sneer.

The story opens with young Abe witnessing the murder of his mother by a vampire. He swears vengeance, and some years later is lucky to be getting drunk while standing at a bar next to Henry Sturgess ( Dominic Cooper ), who coaches him on vampire-killing and explains that it is a high calling, requiring great dedication and avoiding distractions like marriage.

There's an early scene in which Lincoln tries to shoot a vampire, but that won't work because they're already dead. Then whatever can he do? "Well," he tells Henry, "I used to be pretty good at rail-splitting…" This line drew only a few chuckles from the audience, because the movie cautiously avoids any attempt to seem funny.

Lincoln's weapon of choice becomes an axe with a silver blade, which he learns to spin like a drum major's baton. That he carries this axe with him much of the time may strike some as peculiar. I was reminded uncannily of Buford Pusser, walking tall and carrying a big stick.

Against Henry's advice, Lincoln ( Benjamin Walker ) marries Mary Todd ( Mary Elizabeth Winstead ), and the story moves quickly to his days in the White House, where he discovers that the vampires are fighting on the side of the South. This seems odd, since they should be equal opportunity bloodsuckers, but there you have it. Still with him his childhood friend Will Johnson ( Anthony Mackie ), a free black man whose mistreatment helped form Lincoln's hatred of slavery. Also still at his side is Joshua Speed ( Jimmi Simpson ), who hired him in his Springfield general store; Johnson and Speed join Lincoln in Civil War strategy sessions and are his principal advisers, roles overlooked by history.

The film, directed by Timur Bekmambetov and written by Seth Grahame-Smith , based on his novel, handles all these matters with an admirable seriousness, which may be the only way they could possibly work. The performances are earnest and sincere, and even villains like Adam ( Rufus Sewell ), the American leader of the Vampire Nation, doesn't spit or snarl over much. It regrettably introduces but does not explain Vadoma ( Erin Wasson ), a statuesque woman who is several decades ahead of time in her taste for leather fetish wear. Are vampires kinky? I didn't know.

Although we do not attend "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" in search of a history lesson, there's one glitch I cannot overlook. In the first day of fighting at Gettysburg, the Union sustains a defeat so crushing that Lincoln is tempted to surrender. This is because the Confederate troops, all vampires, are invulnerable to lead bullets, cannon fire and steel blades, and have an alarming way of disappearing and rematerializing. Over breakfast, Lincoln confides his despair to his wife and says conventional weapons are of no more use against them than — why — than this fork! As he stares at it, he realizes it is silver, and vampires can be killed by silver weapons, as he has proved with his axe-twirling.

Now try not to focus too much on the timeline. After his realization, Lincoln mobilizes all resources to gather wagonloads of silver in Washington, melt it, and manufacture silver bayonets, bullets and cannon balls. Then we see him, Johnson and Speed on board a weapons train en route to Gettysburg. It is night again, so apparently all of this took less than a day.

Never mind. What comes now is a genuinely thrilling action sequence in which the vampires battle with Lincoln and his friends on top of the speeding train, which hurtles toward a high wooden bridge that has been set alight by the sinister Vadoma (pronounced "Vadooma," I think). This sequence is preposterous and yet exciting, using skillful editing and special effects. Somehow Benjamin Walker and his co-stars here are even convincing — well, as convincing as such goofiness could possibly be.

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" has nothing useful to observe about Abraham Lincoln, slavery, the Civil War or much of anything else. Blink and you may miss the detail that Harriet Tubman's Underground Railway essentially won the war for the North. But the film doesn't promise insights on such subjects. What it achieves is a surprisingly good job of doing justice to its title, and treating Lincoln with as much gravity as we can expect, under the circumstances.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter movie poster

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

Rated R for violence throughout and brief sexuality

Benjamin Walker as Lincoln

Dominic Cooper as Sturgess

Anthony Mackie as Will

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Mary Todd

Rufus Sewell as Adam

Jimmi Simpson as Joshua Speed

Erin Wasson as Vadoma

John Rothman as Jefferson Davis

Directed by

Timur Bekmambetov
Seth Grahame-Smith

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Reviews

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter may be a hollow sort of entertainment, but at least it's entertainment. And that, at least, is a definite improvement on Dark Shadows.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2024

Instead of laughing at this movie, we could have been laughing with it and enjoying the experience rather than despising it. But Bekmambetov forgoes the obvious absurdity of the subject matter.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 4, 2022

Even though "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" butchers and condenses its pulpy and popular source novel, the movie is simply fun escapist entertainment and pops off of the screen like a 3D movie should.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 26, 2022

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a film in which Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires, spends far too long believing it is something other than it clearly is.

Full Review | May 5, 2021

...so refreshingly weird and inherently watchable.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2021

The extent of the ridiculousness here cannot easily be compared or understood.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Dec 1, 2020

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter should have been a really fun film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.0/4.0 | Sep 1, 2020

[The] script ironically lacks imagination and wit.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 27, 2019

Some sh*tty slo-mo action scenes. Some toothless scares.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.8/5 | Nov 11, 2019

The movie sets itself up for a sequel. The good news is that it's bad enough that we'll be spared that fate.

Full Review | Jul 31, 2019

It all sounds silly, but for the most part director Timur Bekmambetov stages it like a reenactment you'd see on the History Channel. It's all kind of proper and stuffy and rather slow and methodical.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Apr 11, 2019

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is not entirely without merit, but it comes with much mess.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 1, 2019

For all its cult ambition, Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter feels like two separate movies bundled into one messy final package.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 25, 2019

It's essentially a cracked-out Wikipedia entry interrupted by bloody, slo-mo combat.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 4, 2018

Lincolns from Walter Huston to Henry Fonda to Brendan Fraser and Lance Henriksen have given us the Great Emancipator as their directors and our dreams would have him. Inaccurately. Why not throw vampires into the mix?

Full Review | Aug 30, 2018

It was the merger of that very real historical account and the fantastical vampire plot that made the book interesting, but the movie sacrificed a lot of that. Too much of that.

Full Review | Oct 23, 2017

If you ever wanted to see a vampire throw a horse at a would-be President, or see a man chop down a tree with one blow, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will tick those boxes and more besides.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 19, 2017

Rare is a film this silly that's also this quietly clever.

Full Review | Aug 26, 2015

Somehow, you can't help but feel vampires deserve better.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 16, 2013

Rather than create an innovative style to complement the horror-history hybrid, he employs superhero clichs and hackneyed action scenes that only help distract from the ineffectiveness of the film's scant 3-D effects.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 21, 2013

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Abraham lincoln: vampire hunter, common sense media reviewers.

Ridiculous, bloody blending of history and violence.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Amid all the killing and blood, there's a smal

Obviously, the real Abraham Lincoln is a powerful

Very strong fantasy/vampire violence, with fightin

A dead, topless girl is shown for a few seconds. A

"F--k" is used once. Also "son of a

Young Abe drinks heavily at a bar in one scene. (A

Positive Messages

Amid all the killing and blood, there's a small message about learning to trust others, as well as challenging issues of race during the slavery days.

Positive Role Models

Obviously, the real Abraham Lincoln is a powerful role model, but the movie's version of Abe is a little different than the legend. Many of his good qualities are still there -- including his achievements as president, his desire to free the slaves, and his ability to see all people as equals ... except for vampires, whom he learns to dispatch with bloody violence. His motivation is revenge, and this vocation requires him to lie to his wife (so much for "honest Abe").

Violence & Scariness

Very strong fantasy/vampire violence, with fighting, shooting, slashing, stabbing, and lots of blood. A boy watches his mother die of a terrible vampire disease; years later, Abe and Mary Todd watch their son die of the same thing (viewers see bloody scabs on his arm). People instantaneously turn into vampires, growing several sharp teeth and lunging at the screen; it's a scary shock. A character is shot through the eye, and the camera follows the bullet. Vampires are beheaded. A vampire throws a live horse at Abe, and it crashes into him in a painful way. Vampires kill a woman in front of her boyfriend.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A dead, topless girl is shown for a few seconds. A couple is interrupted while having sex in a tub. In one sequence, a customer tries to force himself upon a prostitute. Her top is a little loose as she safely runs away, but nothing sensitive is shown. Some kissing, with some sexual suggestion.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k" is used once. Also "son of a bitch," "prick," "balls," "hell," "goddamn," and "whore."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Young Abe drinks heavily at a bar in one scene. (A character says: "A man only drinks that much when he wants to kiss a girl or kill a man. Which is it?") Another major character drinks whiskey in his home and also takes a puff from a hookah pipe, which appears to be empty.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is based on a history-twisting novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. Though it plays fast and loose with facts and has a silly premise, the movie has little humor: It's pure action/horror, with lots of revenge, blood, and fighting -- all in 3-D . A boy watches his mother die, a child dies, and women are killed. Vampires are shot through the eye and beheaded. There's a little sex (including one dead, topless girl on display) and some language, including one "f--k" and a couple uses of "son of a bitch." Young Abe is seen drinking heavily while pondering ways to avenge his mother, and another character drinks and takes a puff from a hookah pipe, which appears to be empty. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (10)
Kids say (29)

Based on 10 parent reviews

Intriguing.

A very disappointing movie remake of the original book. don't bother., what's the story.

As a boy, Abraham Lincoln helplessly witnesses his mother's death at the hands of a vampire. When he becomes a man ( Benjamin Walker ), Abe contemplates his revenge. Then stranger Henry Sturgess ( Dominic Cooper ) offers to teach him how to fight and kill the evil creatures. In Springfield, Abe does his hunting at night, in between studying the law, working at a general store, and courting Mary Todd ( Mary Elizabeth Winstead ). He becomes interested in politics, which leads to his being elected president years later. But when vampires from the South begin to turn the Civil War into a bloody massacre, Abe must take up his old hunting ways once again.

Is It Any Good?

Some of this film's action sequences are big and impressive, but without any emotional involvement, they're as dead as a coffin nail. Director Timur Bekmambetov ( Night Watch , Day Watch , Wanted ) usually makes hyperkinetic movies that have a few explosive scenes but are ultimately empty. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER is doubly so, since it also squanders a great hero and a potentially pleasingly silly idea. The movie takes the idea of Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires seriously and also doesn't seem to wonder about ridiculous concepts such as Southern vampires supporting slavery.

After simply ignoring everything potentially funny and lively, Abraham Lincoln grinds down on its characters, turning them into empty vessels upon which to hang the action sequences. One shot of bearded, stovepipe-hatted Lincoln marching toward the camera in slow motion like a grindhouse hero shows just what Bekmambetov thinks of him.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 's violence . Is it scary? Does it create tension? How necessary is it to the story?

What historical liberties does the movie take? How creative do you think the storytellers were in taking real events and fitting them to the story? Which scenes were based on real events?

Is the movie's Lincoln a positive role model ? What worthwhile qualities does he have? What less admirable qualities does the movie give him?

Is the movie silly or serious, or both? If you've read the book, how does the movie compare?

Movie Details

In theaters : June 22, 2012
On DVD or streaming : October 23, 2012
Cast : Benjamin Walker , Dominic Cooper , Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Director : Timur Bekmambetov
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
Genre : Horror
Topics : Book Characters , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
Run time : 105 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : violence throughout and brief sexuality
Last updated : May 16, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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User reviews

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them.

Timur Bekmambetov
Seth Grahame-Smith
Benjamin Walker
Rufus Sewell
Dominic Cooper
461 User reviews
408 Critic reviews
42 Metascore
1 nomination

Abraham Lincoln

Henry Sturges

Will Johnson

Mary Todd Lincoln

Joshua Speed

Thomas Lincoln

Nancy Lincoln

Jefferson Davis

Willie Lincoln

Senator Jeb Nolan
Young Abraham Lincoln

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

Trivia Benjamin Walker trained to be able to do a lot of his own stunt work with an axe.
Goofs Several times during the movie, the second floor balcony of the White House is shown. The balcony however was not added to the house until the Harry S. Truman renovation circa 1950.

[from trailer]

Abraham Lincoln : History prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle, but forgets the blood. Whatever history remembers of me, if it remembers me at all, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth. For whatever else I am - a husband, a lawyer, a president - I shall always think of myself first and foremost as a hunter.

Crazy credits Part of the closing titles are a sequence of blood trails forming a map of America.
Connections Featured in The Big Review: Summer Trailer Park Series (2012)
Soundtracks Quartet for Strings in B Flat Major 'La Chasse' Op. 1/1 - Minuet Written by Joseph Haydn Arranged by Jim Long Courtesy of Crucial Music Corporation and Point Classics

User reviews 461

Oct 22, 2012
How long is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? Powered by Alexa
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June 22, 2012 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Official site
Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter 3D
French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Abraham Productions
Bazelevs Production
Genre Films
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$69,000,000 (estimated)
$37,519,139
$16,306,974
Jun 24, 2012
$116,471,580

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 45 minutes
Dolby Surround 7.1
Dolby Atmos

More to explore

Movie Review: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Is the Honest Abe Our Generation Deserves

Does any other American president have such an extensive fictional pop-culture mythos? In the thirties, the hero of John Ford and Henry Fonda’s Young Mr. Lincoln fought misguided lynch mobs and fancy city lawyers with false modesty and folksy credulousness. Today, Timur Bekmambetov and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Honest Abe fights vampires with the shock and awe of Hollywood’s full CG firepower. So, maybe each generation gets the Lincoln it deserves. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our films, but in ourselves — to paraphrase the Earl of Oxford.

If I sound like I’m taking a movie called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter a bit too seriously, that’s because the movie, directed by Bekmambetov and based on Grahame-Smith’s novel, kind of takes itself seriously. Producer Tim Burton’s name might be prominent in the credits, but his cheekiness is nowhere to be found. Bekmambetov likes his action theatrics to be consequential. In the Night Watch and Day Watch movies, nothing less than the future of the human race was at stake. The assassins in Wanted weren’t just assassins; they were an ancient race of supernatural assassins. And Vampire Hunter isn’t just a riff on the adventures a young Abe Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) might have had — it essentially turns the Civil War into a personal vendetta.

The vampires, led by dandyish, cold-eyed Adam (Rufus Sewell), are slave traders, one of which (Marton Csokas) kills young Abe’s mother after he tries to prevent them from selling his black friend Will. Using his famous ax-wielding skills and with some Morpheus-like help from good vampire Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), the future president becomes a hunter of the undead. But the story actually goes up through the battle of Gettysburg, where the Army of the Potomac (a.k.a. the Union) is on the verge of being laid low by an undead corps of the Confederacy, before Lincoln rushes to the rescue.

Believe it or not, Bekmambetov’s style is somewhat restrained here. There’s still a lot of slow-motion acrobatic lunacy and bursts of gore, but he keeps some of his worst instincts — a fondness for kineticism rather than clarity, for example, that hobbled Day Watch –— in check, and we can actually follow the action occurring onscreen. He’s also always had an eye for strange moments of cinematic grandeur: small glints glimpsed in an overhead shot of a town being requisitioned for its silver; a train hurtling in the night toward a massive wooden trestle bridge in flames.

Unfortunately, there’s also a certain artificiality to the whole film, both visually and narratively. By sticking a little too much to some of the actual particulars of the Lincoln story (even Stephen Douglas shows up, as he did in Young Mr. Lincoln , acourting the future Mary Todd Lincoln), the film has the strangely programmed feel of a historical pageant, as if Raiders of the Lost Ark had been crossbred with The Longest Day . Matters aren’t helped by Benjamin Walker’s indistinct performance: With his expressionless face and his smooth, half-formed features, he resembles nothing so much as a Liam Neeson action figure. Still, there is something bracing about a film that’s not afraid to link the entire Confederacy, still an inexplicable source of pride in some parts of the country, with a race of humanity-enslaving vampires. I can’t wait to see how this thing plays in South Carolina.

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Abraham lincoln: vampire hunter: film review.

Seth Grahame-Smith adapted his own novel, a genre mashup that rewrites history about the 16th president, played by Benjamin Walker.

By Justin Lowe

Justin Lowe

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: Film Review

Opens: June 22

The Fox release might be the most unusual film on the summer calendar. It definitely isn’t your usual history lesson. Based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith , the genre mash-up reimagines a young Abe Lincoln as a vampire hunter. Wanted’ s Timur Bekmambetov directed from a script by Grahame-Smith and Simon Kinberg . Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is Mary Todd Lincoln and Dominic Cooper appears to school the future president in the art of vampire-fighting.

Starting from a premise — succinctly stated by the movie’s title — that suggests a hybrid of history lesson and horror show, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a mishmash of styles that might leave viewers’ heads spinning. Genre enthusiasts will lap up the mixture of action and fantasy, while history buffs who don’t mind a bit of rewriting will dig into an alternative spin on the Civil War period. Audience response initially should be robust, even if closer consideration might sap some later momentum.

Beginning with Lincoln’s Indiana childhood in the early 1800s, screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (adapting his novel, which supposedly originates with Lincoln’s secret journal) speculates that after young Lincoln and his father dare to interfere with the slave trader Barts ( Marton Csokas ), who also happens to be the nexus in a large network of the undead that has infiltrated the South, the vampire exacts revenge by attacking and killing the 16th president’s mother.

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Review

20 Jun 2012

NaN minutes

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

When Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov broke through in 2004 with the hyper-stylish horror-actioner Night Watch, there was a tingling hope that his talents would not only translate to, but also invigorate, the Hollywood machine. His English-language debut, Wanted, with its ballistic balletics and gloriously eccentric touches (The Loom Of Fate?!) hit the spot. The signs, then, were good for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, especially as it wove in a fun-sounding mash-up concept (courtesy of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies scribbler Seth Grahame-Smith) and an attention-grabbing producer credit for Tim Burton.

Those signs, it turns out, were as reliable as putting a billboard announcing “Indoor Play Centre” outside Dracula’s Castle. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a steam-locomotive wreck (which, funnily enough, features an actual steam-locomotive wreck caused by — possible symbolism alert! — a massive burning bridge). Between them, Grahame-Smith (who also scripts) and Bekmambetov have made the crippling decision to play this entirely straight, to the point of being inflexibly po-faced. The result is a B horror invading a stilted History channel reconstruction, which veers from the unwittingly ridiculous (“I would fight not with an axe, but with words and ideals,” Abe intones during the over-ladled voiceover) to the faintly distasteful; Gettysburg was a long time ago, but it somehow doesn’t feel right in a film that takes itself so seriously to portray a national-psyche-shredding tragedy as a luridly slo-mo vampire massacre.

It is visually awful. In grasping for some kind of period-appropriate authenticity, Caleb Deschanel’s digital cinematography is bleached, harsh, uncomfortable to view. The 3D is, as is so often the case, noticeable only in terms of how much extra weight has been uncomfortably placed on the bridge of your nose. The excessive digital FX are ineffective and oddly oily, especially during a daft sequence where Abe chases ever-hamtastic rent-a-baddie Marton Csokas over, and through, a horse stampede. At one point an obviously CG gee-gee is thrown at Abe by his bloodsucky quarry. It would be funny if this movie had a sense of humour.

There are occasional flashes of the old Timur — a mural comes to life to give a potted history of vampires; an aerial cityscape shot glitters as America’s citizens stockpile silver (which, in this story’s muddled lore, is fatal to vamps) — but they are lost amid all the hurried, tension-free demi-set-pieces and gratuitous speed-ramping. Only one person walks away from this unscathed: Abe himself, Ben Walker, a physically impressive and charismatic specimen who could do worse than keep the nose prosthetic and carve a career playing Young Liam Neeson in flashbacks and Taken reboots.

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‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ Movie Review (2012)

By Brad Brevet

Perhaps what’s most astonishing about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is its tone. This is one hell of a silly movie and yet the performances are entirely straight-faced and sincere to the point I didn’t find myself laughing at the movie, but actually more involved than I ever expected. It wasn’t as tongue-in-cheek as I expected and it does a decent job weaving real history in with screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith’s silliness, adapting the script from his novel of the same name. In short, it’s actually pretty good.

Beginning in 1818, we are introduced to a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln whose mother treats him a valuable lesson in how to treat people when she protects Abe’s best friend, a young black boy, from being beaten with a whip. But it’s a lesson that comes with consequences. That night, Abe witnesses his mother bitten by a vampire. She would die the next day, thus igniting his hatred for the undead, a hatred that would only continue to grow until he was able to exact vengeance.

Years later Abe (Benjamin Walker) meets Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), a man that will eventually coach him on how to destroy vampires, but only once he agrees to put aside his search for revenge. His mouth agrees, his conscience does not and training begins.

Initially offered his choice in firearms, Abe declares a preference for an ax, one he dips in silver and is soon wielding like a professional baton twirler. Unfortunately, to kill the vampires in this movie it’s going to take more than just some fancy ax-spinning to put them down as Abe soon learns once his training is over and he heads to Springfield, IL to blend in and begin his mission.

As soon as he sets foot in town, he befriends James Speed (Jimmi Simpson), a man that would later serve as Attorney General under Lincoln, but here he owns a small shop and offers Abe a job and a place to stay. Work by day, vampire hunting by night.

Here he also meets his future wife Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and reunites with the young man from his past, Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), now a freed slave in need of Abe’s help in maintaining his status as a free man.

To this point, things have seemed relatively simple for Abe, but Adam (Rufus Sewell), the leader of the vampire nation has caught wind of Abe’s exploits and devises his own plan, not necessarily to kill Abe, but to concoct a scheme that will help vampires take over the country.

To avoid spoiling too much, the story works its way through history to the point Lincoln takes office and into the Civil War where the vampires play a pivotal role.

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov ( Wanted ), the story isn’t short on absurd action sequences including a horseback battle between Abe and his one true nemesis and a massive railroad set piece that involves fire, explosions a collapsing bridge and CG blood splattered all over the screen. Ridiculous is the best word to describe it all, but again, it manages to maintain a level of silly meets serious that works in a way that keeps you enthralled and, for the most part, enjoying the ride.

The key to much of it is the performance of Benjamin Walker as Lincoln. Walker’s first ever feature film role was as a 19-year-old version of Liam Neeson in the 2004 film Kinsey and you’ll be hard-pressed not to see a lot of Neeson in Walker’s performance. The comparison is apt not only for their comparable looks and acting styles, but in their ability to turn ridiculous action pieces into legitimately entertaining films. Walker succeeds here in the way Neeson succeeded in The A-Team even though I feel I am in the minority in enjoying that movie, which was certainly far more camp than what you have here.

If I walked away with any wishes, one would have been to include a few more colorful characters, something to break up the tone and give it a jolt. Nothing so outlandish as a character meant solely for “comic relief” but outside of vampires taking the battlefield at Gettysburg all wearing sunglasses and Lincoln booting a severed head off a speeding train, the serious tone does tend to wear. I guess a moment of self-awareness would have been appreciated. Something to let the audience know that while the filmmakers have nailed the tone, an acknowledgment that what we’re watching is truly ridiculous.

Even Rufus Sewell fits right in as a level-headed undead politician of sorts without a hint of eccentricity, though he does get the film’s best line and, if you dig deep enough, is the film’s most fascinating character. Adam is the first of his kind, a vampire that’s been around forever. His name is not in the least bit ironic. Given his age, name and the fact he’s a vampire, I absolutely loved when he said, “Man has enslaved each other since they invented gods to forgive them for doing it.” All things considered, it adds a whole new layer to the fictional history this film weaves.

While not entirely a home run as I can only take so much CG blood before it becomes more of the same, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is worth the watch. I’m not sure it’s a film you absolutely need to see in theaters (and certainly not in 3-D), but I could think of plenty of other less agreeable ways to spend your time.

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Lincoln's Life, Stylized (And Somewhat Embellished)

Ian Buckwalter

Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) and Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie) in one of the slick action sequences from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter . Lincoln's weapon of choice in the film is a silver-plated ax. 20th Century Fox hide caption

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Director:Timur Bekmambetov
Genre: Action, Fantasy
Running Time: 105 minutes

Rated R violence throughout and brief sexuality

With: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jimmi Simpson

Watch Clips

'Real Power'

Credit: 20th Century Fox

'20 Vampires'

Two films into his English-language directing career, and already Timur Bekmambetov is spinning his wheels. But at least when the Kazakh director does so, the wheels have glistening silver rims and spin in hyperdetailed, superslow motion, all while the car is spinning through the air in a graceful, arcing corkscrew.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has no cars, of course, but there are plenty of those post- Matrix action stylings the director likes so much. There's so little variation from his past work here, though, that the film seems cobbled together with spare parts from his Hollywood debut, the curving-bullet Angelina Jolie actioner Wanted , and the cult Russian vampire movie that put him on the U.S. radar, Night Watch . To say that it's an exercise in style over substance is perhaps an overstatement, in that it suggests there's any substance here at all.

But oh, what style. This Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) — sprung tall and lanky from Seth Grahame-Smith's best-selling novel, which he adapts here for the screen — wields a silver-plated ax with the baton-twirling expertise of a vigilante drum major, driven by a single-minded desire to exact vengeance on the vampire who killed his mother when he was a boy. When he puts that ax into action, time slows down, and Bekmambetov tracks his killing strokes in a ballet of digital blood and dismemberment.

Grahame-Smith's story takes the basic chronology and facts of Lincoln's life and reshapes them to fit around a secret identity as a vampire hunter, trained in his calling by a do-gooder vampire named Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper).

The slave trade in America is explained as a vampire plot to create a captive food supply; Lincoln's time working in an Illinois general store — in reality he co-owned it, though in the film, he's just a clerk — sets up a solitary home base for his vampire assassinations. The Civil War itself becomes a war against vampires allied with the Confederacy, each of those factions with its own interest in keeping slavery intact.

Apparently, despite being adapted by the author, the film strays far from Grahame-Smith's original text, yet it still feels very much like a movie adapted from a novel — and poorly adapted, at that. The pacing is as disjointed and jumpy as Bekmambetov's action sequences are fluid and orderly, as if entire chunks of detailed, novelistic narrative were simply excised to make room for more action.

Abraham Lincoln with Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper), a friendly member of the undead who trains Lincoln as a vampire hunter. Stephen Vaughan/20th Century Fox hide caption

Abraham Lincoln with Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper), a friendly member of the undead who trains Lincoln as a vampire hunter.

A couple of those set pieces do go a long way toward making the movie watchable, particularly a legitimately thrilling fight between Lincoln and the vampire leader, a wealthy plantation owner named Adam (Rufus Sewell), that takes place amid a massive stampede of horses. The special effects artists use the cloud of dust kicked up by the thundering hooves to obscure the artificiality of the CGI horses, giving it a dirty, visceral feel that much of the rest of the film, wrapped in a slick digital sheen, often lacks.

For all the attention paid to the meticulously constructed look of the film, it's remarkable how truly awful some of the production values are. Walker wears a prosthetic nose so obviously fake that one expects someone to walk up to him, rip it off and reveal him to be an impostor Lincoln.

The aging makeup used for Lincoln and Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) during his presidency is so slipshod that Winstead in particular seems barely able to move her face to speak — as if she's injected some 19th-century Botox progenitor that causes skin to sag before it atrophies.

And while that horse chase may be a highlight, the film's climactic train chase is so artificial-looking that one wonders if someone forgot to cut the last few checks to the usually reliable effects wizards at Weta Digital.

Add to that massive lapses in the plausibility of some sequences, and the whole thing collapses into an incoherent mess. Yes, I recognize the irony of making believability complaints in a film about Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires, but the logistics the filmmakers try to pass off as possible — particularly involving Lincoln's plan to turn the tide at the Battle of Gettysburg — are insults to basic common sense, even within this manufactured alternate universe. Whatever spark of originality caused Grahame-Smith's book to become a runaway success has burned out entirely here, snuffed by Bekmambetov's slavish dedication to looking cool.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER Review

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter review. Matt reviews Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter starring Benjamin Walker and Dominic Cooper.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter attempts to walk the line between solemn grit and bombastic action. The film stumbles around the line, falls off of it, gropes in the dark to find the line again, give a big goofy smile at no one in particular, regains a wobbly balance before taking a proud stride forward only to constantly repeat this bizarre range of motions. The film is an exercise in pushing the limits of going big while keeping a straight face. In its action scenes, there's not a shred of doubt that director Timur Bekmambetov is trying to find laughs in lunacy to make up for the dearth of humor in the "serious" scenes. But what appears to be an attempt at balance simply comes off as measured schizophrenia, and what should be a fun twist on half-remembered American history instead becomes a dark twist on historiography.

The film opens with the heaviest-handed narration: "History prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality. Soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle, but forgets the blood." These are the words in the secret diary of Abraham Lincoln ( Benjamin Walker ), who is remembered as one of our greatest Presidents, but lived a private life of vampire hunting (the film's title is not misleading). Spurred by the murder of his mother when he was a child, Abe looks to get revenge on her killer, Jack Barts ( Martin Csokas ), only to discover that Mr. Barts is a vampire and not the only one in the world. Abraham is trained in the vampire hunting ways by the mysterious Henry Sturgess ( Dominic Cooper ), but the future President is torn between his desire for vengeance, his loyalty to Henry, his love for Mary Todd ( Mary Elizabeth Winstead ), and his destiny to lead the nation. Even as President, Lincoln's greatest foe isn't Confederate soldiers, but Confederate vampires led by Adam ( Rufus Sewell ), who wants a nation of their own; a nation where they'll have an endless supply of slave blood and be free from the oppression of vampire hunters.

Except Lincoln is the only vampire hunter we ever see. Also, vampires have the ability to turn invisible, move at high speed, can move in the daylight, have super strength, and their only weakness is silver. Why they need their own nation rather than just taking over the entire union is never explained. Of course, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter could care less about making sense. It uses its silly twist to blow apart history as if that's also a license to blow apart a sensible script. For example, the movie establishes the rule that vampires can't hurt other vampires, but then tosses the rule out when it become inconvenient in the third act.

The film's motto seems to be "Take us seriously, so we can be stupid." Lincoln walks around with a constant grimace, mournfully seeking justice for a lost parent, and then there's an action scene where Abe fights with a vampire on top of a stampede. And here's the thing: the set piece is terrific. Yes, it's dumb beyond all reason, but it's creatively dumb beyond all reason. You've never seen a fight like this, and the film's greatest strength comes from originality and imaginative absurdity. But then the movie settles back into a dim, dull palette (made worse by the 3D, which only serves to throw screaming vampires in our faces).

What's more fascinating about the film is the subtext (intentional or not) about how we view our heroes. I would like to think that author and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith considered why Americans find Abraham Lincoln a hero of history. The opening lines have the air of truth—remembering the good while ignoring the bad—but the story itself recasts Lincoln as a man of violence instead of a man of peace. In Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , our 16th President is not "The Great Emancipator". He's The Great Eradicator. It seems to forget that Lincoln wanted to repair the nation, not simply punish the South (that's what Presidents did after Lincoln was assassinated), and make no mistake: the South (with the exception of slaves) is entirely comprised of vampires. The only non-Southern vampire is Jefferson Davis, who we see making a deal with Adam. So the South isn't made of people; it's made of blood-sucking monsters who must be destroyed.

For Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , heroism comes from violence, not from words. In trying to make Lincoln a more interesting figure, they've made him astoundingly generic (Benjamin Walker's bland performance doesn't help). But this all comes from the movie trying to have it both ways. "Don't think too hard about it, because we're being goofy," but then saying, "Recognize this great man was even greater than you think." The film makes no claims of historical accuracy, but it carries itself as secret history. The character we already know of Lincoln cannot be removed from the Lincoln presented. It's a frustrating paradox in a film that admirably wants to blend two tones, but instead feels more like a house divided.

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DVD & Streaming

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Action/Adventure , Drama , Horror , Sci-Fi/Fantasy , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

June 22, 2012
Benjamin Walker as Abraham Lincoln; Dominic Cooper as Henry Sturgess; Anthony Mackie as Will Johnson; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Mary Todd Lincoln; Rufus Sewell as Adam; Marton Csokas as Jack Barts; Jimmi Simpson as Joshua Speed

Home Release Date

October 23, 2012
Timur Bekmambetov

Distributor

20th Century Fox

Movie Review

You’d think Abe Lincoln would’ve been busy enough.

You’d think that, in the midst of planning war strategies and writing policies and giving speeches and doting on his kids and reprimanding his generals and brushing that awesome beard of his, he’d have little energy or inclination to battle the fanged undead too.

Not so, according to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , which suggests that our 16th president shared more in common with Van Helsing (the guy who killed Dracula) than Van Buren (the president with the bushy sideburns). For this ax-swinging Lincoln, the highest office in the land was little more than an afterthought.

Not that he initially thought about being a vampire hunter. Lincoln just wanted a little eye-for-an-eye retribution—to kill the slave trader who murdered his mother. But when Lincoln plants a bullet in the man’s head and out sprouts a forest of fangs … well, Abe gets an inkling that revenge is a dish best served to the cold. If it can be served at all.

So under the tutelage of the mysterious Henry Sturgess, Abraham puts down the gun and picks up an ax—a silver-coated hatchet that he learns to wield like a lumberjack ninja and whirl like a top-hatted majorette. Before long, he finds himself in Springfield, Ill.—a city with a serious vampire-infestation problem.

But just like many English majors today, Abe discovers that his training doesn’t pay the rent. And so he has to get a job as a store clerk, relegating his hunting to the nighttime. It’s just as well, for he must keep his penchant for vampire hunting a secret. Most folks don’t believe in vampires—not in the enlightened 19th century—and they might ask some problematic questions when they inevitably notice some of Springfield’s leading citizens getting, shall we say, the ax.

But a storm’s a-brewing south of Springfield—a storm by the name of Slavery. Seems the country’s vamps love the institution because the slaves keep them (quite literally) fed, fat and happy. And Lincoln begins to wonder … could he do more to push back the country’s vampire plague through more legal means? Is it possible that the pen really is mightier than the ax?

This filmmakers allow that it’s possible … but mostly stick with the ax since you can’t snag the fanboys with the Gettysburg Address.

Positive Elements

Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote both the screenplay for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the preceding book, uses vampirism as a metaphor for the evils of slavery—a practice that (in the film’s case, almost literally) is sucking the life out of the United States. Thus, Lincoln is shown as a true hero, thwacking the heads off evil vampires and choking the life out of the slave trade with every nocturnal hunt.

It’s in the use of this metaphor that the film is at its most successful. Through this surreal reimagining we see glimpses of some of the genuine moral struggles in play leading to and during the war between the states. Before the Civil War (and the war on vampires) begins, we hear people excuse slavery as an unfortunate necessity: Isn’t the slave trade sating these undead monsters below our borders? Isn’t the peace we enjoy because of slavery worth the cost? And then, when the war begins and claims the lives of many a Union soldier, cries go out from across the country, begging for the bloodshed to stop.

But Lincoln and his allies can’t bear a retreat—physically or morally. “I wouldn’t back away from what’s right because it’s hard,” Mary Todd Lincoln tells her husband. And when we hear that the coming fight is “a war for the soul of the country,” we know that’s true—even without the vampires hanging around to drive home the point.

Many of the film’s lines ring with 19th-century idealism, be they from the mind of Grahame-Smith or quotes pulled from Lincoln’s own speeches and writings. And we see Henry force revenge-minded Abe to focus on the bigger picture, telling him, “Real power comes not from hate but truth.” Throughout, we see people stand together and fight for something well worth fighting for: “A nation of men, not monsters.”

Spiritual Elements

Vampires have historically been considered spiritual abominations, and you often get a sense of that here. Silver is about the only thing that’ll harm them in this film, and the metal’s power (we’re told) stems from the 30 pieces of silver Judas accepted to betray Christ. We’re also told that vampires can’t kill or hurt each other (a trope fulfilled inconsistently onscreen), which one vampire suggests is God’s little joke on the undead.

One age-old vampire is referred to as Adam, and he lives on a plantation called Eden. He’s an atheist, though, telling Lincoln that men have been selling one another into slavery ever since they “invented gods to forgive them for doing it.”

The movie begins by quoting Genesis 17:5 (“Your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations”). We hear the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure at heart, for they will see God.” One of the vampires suggests that pure at heart humans can’t be turned into vampires. But pastors can be, we’re told. And we see ministers marrying and burying people. Churches are shown as places of refuge. God’s name is sometimes reverently invoked.

When Mary Todd is asked why she dates someone as dowdy as Abe, she says, “Common-looking people are the best in the world; that’s why God made so many of them.” (It’s a phrase said in real life by Lincoln himself.)

Sexual Content

Henry is shown having noisy sex in a bathtub. (We see the woman from the back.) Abe discovers a dead, bare-breasted woman.

Violent Content

Honest Abe is less a statesman and more a 300 -style warrior here, hacking his way through legions of undead as if the battle were a ballet. His first encounter with a vampire as a full-fledged hunter is perhaps the most horrific. The monster opens a trap door underneath Lincoln, who falls through and winds up hanging upside down in a secret cellar, lassoed by his ankles. Corpses hang all around him, most drained of blood (streaks of it staining skin. The vicious vamp then sets a pan beneath Abe—in preparation to drain the future president too. Lincoln works his way free, naturally, slicing the guy twice across the throat, sending jets of black blood spurting across the room.

Most of Abe’s other battles conclude much the same way: slice, hack, decapitate (repeat). Variations on the theme include Abe dunking a vamp’s head into what appears to be molten metal, punching through a guy’s midsection with a silver watch and using a train car door to do the hard beheading work instead of his ax. He and other cohorts shoot vampires as well, with lead balls lodging in, say, a creature’s eye socket. Sometimes we see Abe bury the grotesquely mutilated bodies of his fallen foes.

A vampire dies after being shot in the forehead with a silver necklace. (The necklace charm hangs outside the wound.) Another has his brains gorily blown out. Abe is bruised and bloodied after his first big confrontation. A training session leaves blood streaming down his face. Others are bitten by vampires. (Sometimes the beasties bite down in the “traditional” way, with blood covering the victim’s neck and coating the killer’s mouth, cheeks and clothes. Other times, vampires merely prick the wrist of victims, a nibble that’s designed to kill slowly as veins discolor and odd sores appear.) One victim, after a particularly vicious attack, still stands, sun shining through a gaping hole in his chest. A fashionable vampire ball ends in a bloody massacre of the slaves and Southerners who’ve been invited to attend.

Two young boys are whipped; one begins to bleed. People are threatened with guns and knives. Folks fall off cliffs. Trains crash and burn. Civil War battles show people getting mowed down by gunfire or sent careening through the air by cannonballs. Someone’s thrown up against the side of the wall, doing more damage to the building than the person.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word. Milder exclamations include “b‑‑ch,” “h‑‑‑” and “pr‑‑k.” God’s name is twice paired with “d‑‑n.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

A vampire smokes a long, elegant pipe. Another drinks a red liquid from a decanter. Lincoln gets drunk at a bar, trying to steel himself to kill someone. Much later, another man does exactly the same thing. Other folks are shown frequently downing whiskey or wine.

Other Negative Elements

Abe never honestly tells his wife about his nocturnal exploits; she has to find out about them by reading his secret diary. A shopkeeper threatens a former worker, telling him he’ll use his scrotum as a coin purse.

“History prefers legends to men,” we hear Lincoln say near the beginning of the movie. “It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle, but forgets the blood.”

This sums up the paradox of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter .

I wasn’t expecting to have much good to say about the movie. I thought it’d be a silly, sloppy, one-joke, thought-free movie easily dismissed. So imagine my surprise when this ax-wielding Abe actually says some pretty cool things and—even in this very surreal world he’s set in—still stands for many of the same principles the real Lincoln stood for. We hear a great deal of talk about freedom and justice and truth … which makes this something of a rare movie in the midst of its R-rated undead-devoted peers. Few others are this sincere about subjects this significant.

But if what we hear is often fairly positive, what we see —well, that’s another matter.

We see a bit of nudity, a coffin full of brutality, and lots and lots of blood—of the red and black varieties. We see a film that doesn’t so much run through its 105 minutes as it hacks and slices and dismembers its way through.

I appreciated Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ s soaring speeches. I wish to forget its brutality.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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"I'm So Proud": Star Wars Responds Perfectly To Hugh Jackman's Revenge Of The Sith Tribute

Why the harkonnen planet is black & white in dune, kenneth branagh's new movie is the perfect follow-up to his $600 million poirot trilogy, the film doesn't quite deliver a fully-formed combination of history and supernatural horror, but for anyone who can accept the experience on its own terms, there are plenty of entertaining moments..

For moviegoers who are still unfamiliar with author (now screenwriter) Seth Grahame-Smith, the idea of an undead-slaying Honest Abe might seem especially ridiculous - but that's only because Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter beat Grahame-Smith's other well known horror mashup novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , to the big screen. While Pride and Prejudice and Zombies continues to languish in preproduction hell, director Timur Bekmambetov ( Wanted ) managed to bring Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to fruition, barely two years after the source material book was first published (in March 2010).

However, despite an intriguing (and purposefully absurd) premise, moviegoers have a plethora of vampire films to choose from, these days. Do Grahame-Smith and Bekmambetov manage to deliver a film adaptation that successfully juggles the campy setup and over-the-top action with intriguing alt-history tie-ins and enjoyable character/Presidential drama?

Fortunately, the answer is yes, assuming that moviegoers can suspend enough disbelief and lock into Grahame-Smith's eccentric retelling of Abraham Lincoln's secret monster-slaying nightlife. Certainly, anyone expecting a straightforward and grounded take on the life of Honest Abe should pass on the film (and look to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln starring Daniel Day-Lewis), as Vampire Hunter is full of one-note characters, sometimes laughable attempts at tying the supernatural plot to real life events, and several over-the-top set pieces. That said, the mashup film is exactly what viewers should have expected from a Bekmambetov film about an axe-wielding President who fights to free America from slavery and undead bloodsuckers, alike.

For anyone unfamiliar with the alternate historical account depicted in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , the film (and source material novel) are centered around Abe's secret diary, which includes the account of both his political - as well as supernatural - encounters, starting with the death of his mother at the hands of Jack Barts (Marton Csokas), a local businessman/vampire. After years of patiently waiting, Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) sets out to avenge his mother and encounters Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper) - who trains Abe in the art of vampire hunting and impressively choreographed axe wielding. Despite Henry's instruction to avoid making friends or starting a family, Lincoln befriends a local shopkeep, Joshua Speed (Jimmi Simpson), courts Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and reconnects with childhood friend/free African-American, William Johnson (Anthony Mackie). Though, when vampire chief Adam (Rufus Sewell) forms an alliance with confederate separatists, Lincoln's loved ones (as well as the country itself) are threatened - forcing the 16th President to take action in and outside of the political arena.

As mentioned, the basic plot of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter can be pretty convoluted - especially in its attempts to marry historical events and real-life personalities with supernatural elements. At times, history and fiction are stitched together in a way that makes both sides of the mashup more interesting, such as Lincoln's time spent running a general store and a flatboat trip to New Orleans; unfortunately, other moments are too on-the-nose - relying on thin (and overly convenient) supernatural explanations for real events.

Similarly, characters are exceptionally one-dimensional - which is, by far, the biggest missed opportunity in the entire film (considering the story utilizes a number of historical figures within a supernatural conspiracy plot). While audiences may be surprised to find that one of history's most iconic leaders (who, in this case, also happens to fight vampires at night) isn't all that interesting, it's hardly the fault of actor Benjamin Walker - who manages to keep what could have otherwise been a goofy portrayal of the 16th President (both old and young) grounded and believable during even the most outrageous monster slaying escapades. Both Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Mary Todd and Anthony Mackie's William Johnson are equally competent but underutilized - mostly reacting to increasingly crazy revelations without room to actually flesh out their characters as anything more than Lincoln's loved ones. However, the biggest character misfire is the flat-out boring implementation of the primary vampires - the aforementioned Adam, and his lady Vadoma (Erin Wasson), who are nothing more than soulless faces in a convoluted attempt by Grahame-Smith to marry a vampire rebellion with anti-abolitionist confederates.

In spite of its shortcomings, the core premise rarely fails to entertain (even if there are a number of eye roll-worthy moments), since the vampire hunting elements successfully up-the-ante with each encounter. Early on, Lincoln forgoes his mentor's preferred means of dispatching vampires, i.e. silver bullets - in favor of some slick axe work. While some audience members may find the axe versus vampire flesh sequences to be a little too flashy (and hard to follow), Bekmambetov utilizes some effective slow motion camerawork to showcase Lincoln's stylish and acrobatic slaying techniques. In a genre that is overwrought with gun battles and throwing knives, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter thankfully presents a number of entertaining close quarters combat sequences that, despite our obvious real-world knowledge of Lincoln, make it easy to believe that the President could go toe-to-toe with similarly gifted monster slayers like Blade and Van Helsing.

Despite some high-octane action moments in the film's trailer, Vampire Hunter is actually pretty intimate - as most of the epic moments are still pretty confined (narratively speaking). Few of the set pieces are given much time to build tension and many of the encounters offer little more than flashy hack and slash choreography. This isn't to say that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter can't deliver on excitement - since a number of the vampire hand-to-Honest Axe combats benefit from Bekmambetov's trademark fast and furious action beats.

Additionally, while many theaters will be pushing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in 3D, the film would be just as enjoyable without the premium upgrade. There are a few moments where the slow-motion axe combat looks especially slick (as vampire blood spews into the air) and several larger shots (such as a trip on the Mississippi river as well as Civil War battlefields) are definitely enhanced by the added dimension; but only those few moments are must see in 3D. As a result, the 3D up charge isn't a waste, but it's hardly required viewing.

Moviegoers expecting a gritty "Lincoln kills vampires" character drama will likely be disappointed by Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter ; although, as a tongue-in-cheek action mashup, Grahame-Smith and Bekmambetov have, for the most part, delivered an entertaining (albeit campy) historical retelling. The film doesn't quite deliver a fully-formed combination of history and supernatural horror (if that's even possible), but for anyone who can accept the experience on its own terms, there are plenty of entertaining moments of vampire hunting to keep your appetite for blood a fun time at the theater sated.

If you’ve seen the movie and want to discuss details about the film without worrying about spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it, please head over to our Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Spoilers Discussion .

For an in-depth discussion of the film by the Screen Rant team check out our Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter episode of the SR Underground podcast .

If you’re still on the fence about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , check out the trailer below:

[poll id="338"]

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comment section below.

Follow me on Twitter @ benkendrick for future reviews, as well as movie, TV, and gaming news.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is Rated R for violence throughout and brief sexuality. Now playing in theaters.

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Movie Reviews
2.5 star movies

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter : Four-score and Seven Corpses

A moribund version of Seth Grahame-Smith's mashup novel springs to life only when Abe is railsplitting the undead

TIME’s Lev Grossman has called Seth Grahame-Smith “the luckiest freelancer in the world.” Grahame-Smith was the guy an editor named Jason Rekulak tapped to write a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . When that sold a million copies, Grahame-Smith extended the suddenly burgeoning literary-mashup franchise with his own Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , positing that our 16th President fought the Civil War against an army of slave-sucking vampires.

(READ: Lev Grossman’s book review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter )

Actually, that cocktail of historical biography and low-genre setting was even less original than it sounds. In 2001 some kids in Canada made Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter , a no-budget action-horror-Mexican-wrestling musical about the Messiah’s battle to save Ottawa’s lesbians from their undead overlords. No matter: Hollywood is hot to make films from any book, comic book or matchbook about vampires (or zombies). Hence this week’s 3-D movie hybrid, ALVH .

(FIND: Corliss’s critique of Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter in the Top 12 Jesus Movies )

The movie seems designed for an odd demographic: people who are students of both Dawn of the Dead and Doris Kearns Goodwin. It could pass for one of the hundreds of respectful Lincoln bio-pics, if only Abe (Benjamin Walker) didn’t take time out from courting Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and saving the Union to wield a silver axe against ravenous monsters. The estimable Kazakh director Timur Bekmambatov — who made two spiffy modern-day vampire movies, Night Watch and Day Watch , in Russia, then came West to helm the fabulous thriller Wanted , from Mark Millar’s graphic novel — has devoted a tone of ferocious solemnity and a ton of unneeded craft to making this strange concoction plausible. To not all that much avail.

(READ: a Corliss paean to Timur Bekmanbetov’s Wanted )

Things that ALVH says we didn’t know about Lincoln: Abe saw his mother killed by the vampire Jack Barts (Martin Csokas) and swore to avenge her death by slaughtering all of Barts’ kind; as a young man he met a career vampire hunter, Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), who trained him in the lore of the craft; he learned that Barts was a servant of the bloodsucker-in-chief Adam (Rufus Sewell) and his aide-de-vamp Vadoma (Erin Wasson), who dwelled in Louisiana and used African slaves not as field workers but as food; he befriended a black freeman, Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), who became Lincoln’s closest Presidential adviser; and he waged the Civil War, in part, to rid the nation of its secret vampire plague. Oh, and Jefferson Davis was in cahoots with Adam; the rebel army was manned, or thinged, mostly by vampires.

In writing the screenplay, Grahame-Smith junked much of his own book. He excised many of the novel’s characters (Ann Rutledge, Edgar Allan Poe, John Wilkes Booth) and streamlined the novel’s picaresque plot. The movie focuses on four periods in Lincoln’s life: his youth, when he sees his mother killed; his late teenage years, when he takes up vampire-hunting as a vocation; his early manhood in Springfield, where he meets Mary Todd; and his Presidency, where (in a climax not in the book) the fate of the Union rests on getting a train through to Gettysburg despite an infestation of the Southern undead.

(READ: Corliss’s review of Dark Shadows , scripted by Grahame-Smith)

Some very gifted artisans have fooled themselves into thinking they were making art. ALVH looks, and often plays, like a Sundance movie about creatures of the night. Caleb Deschanel, the great veteran cinematographer ( The Black Stallion , The Right Stuff ) and, in his spare time, Zooey’s dad, swathes the movie in a desaturated, often sepia tinge, as if, in the 19th century, America couldn’t yet afford full color — and the tripod hadn’t been invented to keep the camera from shaking.

The attractive, little-known cast devotes full vigor to their roles. Csokas, liberated from his pruny-swain roles in Alice in Wonderland and The Debt , gives Barts a seedy grandeur and an aristocratic smirk. Sewell, once the young dreamboat of Tom Stoppard’s superb Arcadia in its London premiere, makes a suitably menacing and weary chief villain. Wasson is a seductive predator, and Cooper excellent as a courtly version of the grizzled gunslinger from old Westerns.

(READ: Lily Rothman’s interview with Benjamin Walker )

Walker, who turns 30 today, is known to Broadway audiences for playing another President in the recent emo-rock bio-musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson , where he prepped for his big movie role by shouting the signature line, “I will make them all bleed!” Looking like a young Liam Neeson (in Kinsey , he played the 19-year-old version of Neeson’s character) who, over the course of the film, ages into Sam Waterston, Walker has an impossible task: to play our gravest President as an action hero. Toward the end he has trouble acting through the old-Abe makeup, but he’s a wizard at wielding that magical silver axe with a pistol concealed in the handle.

(READ: Richard Zoglin’s review of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson )

It is only in the action sequences that ALVH wakes from its torpor and springs to mad life, pitting Abe’s martial-arts expertise against the vampires’ crimson bites — kung-fu vs. fang goo. If you skip seeing the movie in a theater and wait to rent the DVD, you’ll be able to fast forward to some fine battles: Abe with an undead pharmacist, Abe chasing Barts across the backs of horses during a stampede, Abe and Henry felling a couple dozen of Adam’s underlings, all the adversaries massed in a train speeding toward a collapsing bridge. (Applause to fight choreographer Igor Tsay, who also worked on Bekmambetov’s Day Watch , and to stunt coordinator Mic Rodgers.) The director may rely overmuch on the old Hong Kong movie trick of slowing down the action in mid-punch, -kick or -slice, but he proves that the kick-ass scenes in Wanted were no fluke. He’s an action master with a nasty bite.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Review by brian eggert june 23, 2012.

In 2009, author Seth Grahame-Smith popularized a mashup subgenre where he blended classical literature with horror in his successful book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , a satiric and wryly amusing post-modern effort followed the next year by the equally wry history-horror mashup Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter . Imitators like Ben H. Winters’ Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina would follow. For a casual read, why not? And with titles like these, how could they not have a sense of humor or not prove to be escapist fun? But there’s nothing funny or enjoyable about the movie based on Grahame-Smith’s second book, produced by Tim Burton and directed by Wanted helmer Timur Bekmambetov. This utterly humorless interplay between vampire carnage and our 16th president’s life story takes itself very seriously, and the outcome, marked by Bekmambetov’s over-stylized approach, doesn’t share the cleverness of its title.

No one expects a history lesson from a movie like this; thus, the story plays like a highlight reel of Lincoln’s legend, revealing how our greatest president’s most important decisions were actually fuelled by his desire to kill vampires. As a boy, young Abe’s mother was murdered by a nasty bloodsucker, and later, as a vengeful young man (now played by Benjamin Walker), he haplessly sets out for revenge. Botching his initial encounter with a vamp, Lincoln is saved by vampire hunter extraordinaire Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper). Sturgess teaches Lincoln how to channel his thirst for revenge into superhuman physical powers against those who thirst for blood. Lincoln soon moves to Springfield, falls for Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), gathers a couple of sidekicks (Anthony Mackie and Jimmi Simpson), becomes interested in politics, and before you know it, the movie is smack-dab in the middle of the Civil War. But the Civil War is not so much about abolishing slavery as it is an epic battle between humans (the Union) and vampires (the Confederates), the latter group led by an ancient neck-biter named Adam (Rufus Sewell), who is bent on claiming America for the vampires.

The cult popularity of Grahame-Smith’s books all but packed his bags for Hollywood, although his adaptations of his own novel here and his earlier script for Burton’s Dark Shadows do not bode well for his future. Both are misguided, unfunny horror mashups that seem unsure of themselves tonally. Are we supposed to be laughing? Are we supposed to be thrilled? Who knows. And only the directors of these projects seem even more unsure than Grahame-Smith. Bekmambetov tries to balance elements of historical biopic, Blade -esque vampire yarn, bits of romance, wartime drama, and superhero story archetypes into one movie. Not one of these elements is successful. It’s all punctuated by Bekmambetov’s in-your-face overreliance on derivatively styled action sequences, most borrowed from Zach Snyder’s slow-down-then-speed-up handbook, and all edited into mincemeat. How many times can one movie show its hero twirling an ax like a baton to decapitate countless vamps? Or performing elaborate acrobatics in slow-mo? How many vampire movies must it take before Hollywood realizes no one wants to see those CGI-widened vampire mouths, extended vertically like a stretched balloon (see the Fright Night remake for another example)?

Bekmambetov is praised in some circles for his highly visual approach to film-making. His style is certainly distinct, but its characteristics aren’t necessarily admirable. His other vampire films, Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006), suffer from the same excess of energy as this film, and some mistake wild camera angles and visual trickery for great directing. Where’s the story, I ask? Even on a purely visual level, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter looks awful. Although I avoided the (much disgraced) post-converted 3-D version and saw the film in 2-D, the intentional fog and dust-laded action sequences make for an unintelligible viewing experience even without darkening 3-D glasses. Consider a sequence where Lincoln chases his mother’s murderer Barts (Marton Csokas) through a stampede of horses. Not only is this sequence hard to make out because Bekmambetov has veiled every shot with CGI dust kicked up by the horses, but the action proves doubly absurd as Lincoln leaps on the animals’ backs to dish out his revenge. The climactic train sequence is just as impossible to see because of an excess of fog, fire, and the muddied lensing by Caleb Deschanel.

Aside from a story novelty that may draw some (unfortunate) curious viewers in, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter feels like a missed opportunity for a cult classic. Walker gives the only standout performance amid the cast, and he bears a striking resemblance to a young Liam Neeson, who, interestingly enough, was once cast to play Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming historical biopic titled Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis replaced Neeson). Regardless, no performance will make up for the tonal disaster that ended up onscreen. Instead of laughing at this movie, we could have been laughing with it and enjoying the experience rather than despising it. But Bekmambetov forgoes the obvious absurdity of the subject matter and resolves to make an actionized horror movie that wants to wow us. Instead, we just sit back thinking how silly the story is, how dreadful the presentation looks, and how uninvolved we are.

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Star Wars: Andor Director's Star Trek Movie Gets Encouraging Update

Toby Haynes' Star Trek movie has gotten an encouraging update months after it was announced.

Paramount is moving forward with a new Star Trek movie that was announced in January. At the time, it was announced that Toby Haynes ( Star Wars: Andor ) would direct , and now Paramount has reportedly turned to filmmaker Simon Kinberg to help bring the project to life.

As revealed by the What I'm Hearing... newsletter (per Deadline ), Kinberg is in negotiations to produce the next Star Trek movie at Paramount. Kinberg is known for producing both Deadpool movies starring Ryan Reynolds along with Hugh Jackman's Logan , and he serves as an executive producer for the upcoming film, Deadpool & Wolverine . He also wrote and directed the X-Men movie Dark Phoenix , and he also served as a writer on the franchise films X-Men: Day of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse . Kinberg, who co-wrote the 2015 Fantastic Four movie, also produced films like Jumper , The Martian , and The New Mutants .

Live Long & Prosper: 21 Best Quotes From Star Trek's Spock

Seth Grahame-Smith ( Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , The LEGO Batman Movie ) is writing the screenplay for the new film. It is directly linked to the Star Trek reboot trilogy and will be produced under J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions. While specific plot details haven't been divulged, the film has been described as a prequel, reportedly set decades before the first film of the new Star Trek movie trilogy.

Multiple Star Trek Movies Are Planned

This is not the same project as the long-gestating follow-up to those Star Trek films. For years, there have been false starts with a planned fourth installment of the new trilogy, which would reunite most of the same starring cast members. Chris Pine is up for returning as James T. Kirk, but he seems to be just as much in the dark as the fans on when that sequel may finally see the light of day.

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"I honestly don't know. There was something in the news of a new writer coming on board. I thought there was already a script ," Pine recently said of the film, per Business Insider . "But I guess I was wrong, or they decided to pivot. As it's always been with [ Star Trek ], I just wait and see."

Another Star Trek film is currently in production for a release on Paramount+. Dubbed Star Trek: Section 31 , the movie will star Michelle Yeoh, who's reprising her role from the TV series Star Trek: Discovery . The movie officially wrapped filming in March, but as of now, it has not yet been given a set release date.

Source: Deadline

The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series' voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there's a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

Simon Kinberg in Talks to Produce ‘Star Trek’ Prequel Film

By Adam B. Vary

Adam B. Vary

Senior Entertainment Writer

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Veteran producer Simon Kinberg , who oversaw most of the “X-Men” movies for 20th Century Fox, is in talks to produce an upcoming “ Star Trek ” movie for Paramount Pictures, Variety has confirmed.

The project has already been in development at the studio for some time, with Seth Grahame-Smith (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) handing the screenplay and Toby Haynes (“Andor,” “Black Mirror: USS Callister”) on board to direct. Insiders say the film is intended as an origin story for the main timeline of the “Star Trek” franchise (rather than the alternate, Kelvin timeline started with 2009’s “Star Trek”), set in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with aliens.

Popular on Variety

The “Star Trek” prequel will also be produced by J.J. Abrams, who has overseen all “Star Trek” movies through Bad Robot since 2009’s “Star Trek,” which he directed. Abrams is also producing a separate “Star Trek” film intended to be the final mission of the Kelvin timeline cast, including Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaña. Steve Yockey (“The Flight Attendant”) is writing the newest draft of that script.

Puck first broke the news about Kinberg.

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COMMENTS

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter movie review (2012)
Written by. Seth Grahame-Smith. "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject — unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater. It's also a more entertaining movie than I remotely expected.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
34% Tomatometer 194 Reviews 50% Audience Score 100,000+ Ratings While still a boy, Abraham Lincoln loses his mother to a vampire's bite. He vows revenge, but fails in the attempt, narrowly ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is the new movie from director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Night Watch) and Tim Burton, based upon the book by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the film's screenplay. What if Abe Lincoln was not just a President of the United States, but a vampire hunter, and that history was actually clouded by a series of lies?
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 26, 2022. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a film in which Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires, spends far too long believing it is something other than it ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Movie Review
Parents need to know that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is based on a history-twisting novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. Though it plays fast and loose with facts and has a silly premise, the movie has little humor: It's pure action/horror, with lots of revenge, blood, and fighting -- all in 3-D.A boy watches his mother die, a child dies, and women are killed.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. With Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them.
Movie Review: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Is the Honest ...
Today, Timur Bekmambetov and Seth Grahame-Smith's Honest Abe fights vampires with the shock and awe of Hollywood's full CG firepower. So, maybe each generation gets the Lincoln it deserves ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Jan 8, 2013. TL;DR A good bad action movie that is hardly taking itself seriously, while featuring one of the most prominent characters in American history. Abraham Lincoln stars as a normal man turned vampire slayer bent on revenge, until he discovers an even more insidious plot in America.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: Film Review
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: Film Review. Seth Grahame-Smith adapted his own novel, a genre mashup that rewrites history about the 16th president, played by Benjamin Walker.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Review
The movie's a hybrid horror movie and straightforward biopic with the final result being neither fish nor fowl. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter isn't scary or exciting enough to truly work as a ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Review
Release Date: 20 Jun 2012. Running Time: NaN minutes. Certificate: 15. Original Title: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. When Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov broke through in 2004 with the hyper ...
'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' Movie Review (2012)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) movie review from director Timur Bekmambetov and starring Benjamin Walker and Anthony Mackie.
Movie Reviews
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter inserts pro-slavery, bloodsucking villains into the 16th president's life story. Critic Ian Buckwalter says the movie is full of style but lacks all substance and ...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER Review
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter attempts to walk the line between solemn grit and bombastic action. The film stumbles around the line, falls off of it, gropes in the dark to find the line again ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter critic reviews
Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed. ... Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Critic Reviews. Add My Rating Critic Reviews User Reviews Cast & Crew Details 42. Metascore Mixed or Average positive. 12 ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Positive Elements. Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote both the screenplay for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the preceding book, uses vampirism as a metaphor for the evils of slavery—a practice that (in the film's case, almost literally) is sucking the life out of the United States. Thus, Lincoln is shown as a true hero, thwacking the heads off evil vampires and choking the life out of the ...
'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' Review
Rufus Sewell, Benjamin Walker, and Erin Wasson in 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'. Despite some high-octane action moments in the film's trailer, Vampire Hunter is actually pretty intimate - as most of the epic moments are still pretty confined (narratively speaking). Few of the set pieces are given much time to build tension and many of the ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a 2012 American action horror film directed by Timur Bekmambetov and based on the novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith, ... The movie premiered in New York City on June 18. Abraham ... 2014, Rotten Tomatoes reports a "rotten" approval score of 33%, based on 195 reviews, with an average score of 4.9/10 ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter : Four-score and Seven Corpses
Hence this week's 3-D movie hybrid, ALVH. (FIND: Corliss's critique of Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter in the Top 12 Jesus Movies) The movie seems designed for an odd demographic: people who are students of both Dawn of the Dead and Doris Kearns Goodwin. It could pass for one of the hundreds of respectful Lincoln bio-pics, if only Abe ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
In 2009, author Seth Grahame-Smith popularized a mashup subgenre where he blended classical literature with horror in his successful book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a satiric and wryly amusing post-modern effort followed the next year by the equally wry history-horror mashup Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.Imitators like Ben H. Winters' Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and ...
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Chris Stuckmann reviews Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, starring Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rufus Sewell. ...
MOVIE REVIEW: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Even though Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter butchers and condenses its pulpy and popular source novel from Seth Grahame-Smith (who also wrote the screenplay, which means fans have no one to blame but the man himself), the movie is simply fun escapist entertainment and pops off of the screen like a 3D movie should. It may feel like camp in ...
Star Wars: Andor Director's Star Trek Movie Gets Encouraging Update
Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The LEGO Batman Movie) is writing the screenplay for the new film.It is directly linked to the Star Trek reboot trilogy and will be produced under J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions. While specific plot details haven't been divulged, the film has been described as a prequel, reportedly set decades before the first film of the new Star Trek ...
'Star Trek' Prequel: Simon Kinberg in Talks to Produce
The project has already been in development at the studio for some time, with Seth Grahame-Smith ("Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter") handing the screenplay and Toby Haynes ("Andor ...

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‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ Movie Review (2012)

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