How could I turn this down? Who knew the man with a pretty busy agenda as President had perhaps an even bigger job to do killing off vampires? Admit it – you either snickered, rolled your eyes or both when you first heard of this movie.
I did both– but I had to look. And the first thing I wanted to know was, are they serious? Or will this be campy fun? Well, it turns out, dead serious and that made it dead bad.
Based on a novel by some “up and coming breakthrough young author”, in this fantasy version of Abe’s life, his Mom is killed by a vampire and Abe is then committed to their destruction. He then is drawn into a much larger battle where nothing less than the future of all mankind is at stake. Plus, as it turns out, the vamps are also evil slave owners, controlling the South– of course!
Didn’t I swear off vampire movies? Time to punish myself - I gotta go bang my head against the wall again. This is nothing but a 3-D marketing gimmick. And I spent $15! Yikes, now I owe myself three more head bangs.
It might have seemed clever weaving a vampire story into the Abe Lincoln legend - after all he’s pretty good with an axe, the weapon he mostly uses to off them. But around Abe, played by Matthew Walker who does at least look the part, they are a pretty helpless bunch – they seem to pop out of nowhere, hover over him with their creepy faces and big fangs, all long enough for Abe to take a swing and pop their heads off. Do you really want to see an hour and a half of this?
For filler, Abe meets Mary Todd, reunites with a black childhood friend who will help him both free the slaves and destroy the evil (they do eventually become one and the same). He also must overcome Adam (Rufus Sewell), the 5,000 year old ground zero vampire who only wants what’s right – for vamps to rule the world.
Lastly, there’s Henry (Dominic Cooper), a mysterious guy who knows Abe is trying to revenge his mother’s death and teaches him all the skills and knowledge he will need to take out the vampires. You might find his motivations mildly interesting.
That’s about it. Plus this - don’t go. The movie eventually goes “all action”, but it is just another “kill all the vampires” movie and the 3-D is fairly pathetic. At one point, Abe is battling one vampire while a stampede of “dangerous” cartoon horses passes through. Wow – he narrowly escapes death there. Again, don’t go -unless watching vampires fighting for the South in a reenactment of
