Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
(2012) doesn't earn my vote.
Like
some presidential campaigns of recent vintage, this 2012 movie from director Timur
Bekmambetov is all style and no substance.
Worse,
much of the visual style in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
doesn’t make sense within the confines of a grounded historical fantasy. Rather, the-you’ve-seen-it-all-before,
slow-down/speed-up, Physics-defying fight sequences merely exemplify a
terminal case of BMF-ism.
That’s
Bad Mutha-Fucka-ism, meaning that the
images are designed to look ultra-cool, but boast no grounding in the movie’s
actual narrative or themes. Characters
like Lincoln can thus defy gravity because…they
can, not because they possess special abilities or powers, in other words. By contrast, in The Matrix (1999), bullet
time and other laws-of-nature-defying fight moves could be rationalized in a
meaningful way that tied in with the story of life as a computer simulation. But
not here.
Beyond
this concern, Abraham Lincoln -- a man
known for his stance that the freedom of all men must be recognized and
maintained (per the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863) -- here relegates an
entire race (the vampire nation) to bloody death because he believes,
essentially, in stereotypes.
If
some vampires are murderous, they must
all be murderous, he concludes. Lincoln believes in this stereotype fervently despite the fact that one of his
most trusted allies, Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper) is a heroic and noble
vampire. This fact hardly gives him
pause.
In
short, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is bad fantasy and bad history,
and that makes it a very bad movie indeed.
A tremendous amount of money was sunk into the film in hopes that the
audience will avoid this conclusion, but Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is
ultimately uninvolving on a human level, even if it blows up things “real good.”
“History
remembers the battle, but forgets the blood.”
Young
Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) sees his mother die at the hands of a man
named Barts (Marton Csokas), a vampire.
Nine years later, an adult Lincoln swears vengeance for her death. He becomes allied with a man named Henry, who
offers Lincoln the opportunity to train as a vampire hunter.
Lincoln
accepts, and soon learns that vampires are thriving throughout the Southern
United States. They are led by a man
called Adam (Rufus Sewell) and an enforcer named Vadonna (Erin Wasson), his
sister.
Lincoln
moves to Springfield, Illinois to work in a local shop by day, and hunt
vampires by night. He soon meets the
love of his life, Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and moves into politics.
Eventually
Abraham Lincoln ascends to the White House and prosecutes the Civil War. He learns that vampires are planning to aid
Jefferson Davis (John Rothman) in a plan to destroy the Union, and draws the
final battle lines…
“I
shall kill them all!”
I
haven’t read the book by Seth Grahame-Smith, so I can make no judicious commentary
on its quality, or whether or not the film faithfully follows the details of
the literary source. What I can state
rather unequivocally is that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the
movie, leaves plenty of gaps in its discourse.
The
most irritating of these gaps involves Lincoln’s shift from vampire hunting to
politicking. He decides that he needs a “contingency plan” for his life, and so
goes into politics where he can make use of his skills in persuasion. The film completely glosses over Lincoln’s campaign
to win the Presidency, a place where any discussion of blood-sucking vampires
might have been funny and pointed, and so we lose track of our connection to
the character.
Also,
it floors me that any film about Abraham Lincoln would transform perhaps the
ultimate “conviction” politician into a guy who ran for president just because
he needed “a contingency plan” in his life.
The
half-assed way the film covers politics and Lincoln’s decision to move into
politics is borderline insulting, but also, in terms of the drama, it just
doesn’t work. The film could have
followed two possible courses that would have made the choice to pursue the
Presidency meaningful. Lincoln could
have become President because he wished to quash injustice in our land. Or he could have become President because he
knew what dangers (vampires!) lurked just beneath the surface. Why the film wouldn’t at least pay lip
service to one approach or the other is baffling. Perhaps we’ve just become so cynical as a
society that we can’t believe a man would seek high office to help other people.
I
also really find it incredibly disturbing that this film would categorize the
Lincoln of the Emancipation Proclamation as a man who would sanction and
prosecute what is essentially genocide without some very deep contemplation. But the film simply avoids a discussion of vampire
nature here.
Why is Henry good,
but other vampires are bad? Aren’t there other good vampires too? Are we to believe there is only one good
vampire? The Civil War pit brother
against brother, so is it too much to believe that it might have pit some vampires
against other vampires? Would all
blindly follow Adams call to bloody violence against humanity?
It’s
true that I don’t automatically expect sympathy or equal rights for vampires in
all horror movies. But Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter -- because
of its time period and central character -- exists on a terrain that demands some discussion or debate of
this subject matter. It can’t just avoid
the question in favor of more cool fight scenes and expected to be regarded
positively.
It
seems to me that, historically speaking, part of Abraham Lincoln’s courage came
from the fact that he could see beyond
the prevailing stereotypes and nonsense about blacks being of an inferior breed. He recognized that slaves are men too, and
thus deserve the same rights as all men.
So
it just doesn’t make any sense that the same man who could visualize that
greater perspective of racial justice would gaze narrowly at vampires and
assume that every individual vampire
is a drooling abomination, especially since he has evidence that this is not so
in Henry.
In real life, Lincoln was a politician who
spoke out against unnecessary violence and warmongering (such as the Mexican-American
War) and so this idea of him as some unthinking agent of genocide, even against
vampires, doesn’t work for me.
But
of course, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter isn’t interested in either
politics or painting a realistic historical portrait of Lincoln, the man. No real, substantive tie is made between the
evil of slavery and the evil of vampires in the film. It’s lightly touched on, but not deeply
considered.
Unfortunately,
the film isn’t interested in satire, either.
The title suggests a degree of intellectual absurdity and playfulness
that
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter completely fails to capitalize on. The film could have been an action-packed
satire about politics as “blood sport,” but instead it boasts almost no humor
whatsoever, except from the humor audiences may locate themselves in seeing a
tall-hatted, lanky Abe Lincoln wield an axe while jumping over train cars and
battling vampires.
I
imagine some folks will probably read this review and say, come on, John, it’s just supposed to be an entertaining movie. Don’t overthink it.
Well,
the problem there is that the movie only entertains in hiccupping fits and
starts. Some visuals are powerful, to be
certain, like a battle amid a horse stampede, or the final, fiery combat over a
burning bridge.
But
between these admittedly-spiky visuals, almost nothing interesting
happens. The movie jumps over all the
intriguing events in Lincoln’s life, including his bid for the Presidency, and
even his first campaign to win in the House of Representatives…just to get to
ridiculously-styled vampire fights.
And
those fights just aren’t good enough to carry the day. I’m a strong proponent
of the belief that especially in fantasy films, some rules must be
observed. If we are to imagine a world
of dragons, or Hobbits, or even vampires, we must see that the world is still
grounded in ways that make it recognizable to us, as human beings. Slather on
too many fantastic elements, and a fantasy begins to crack under the strain.
Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
-- with all its crazy angles and gravity-defying
battle sequences -- sacrifices realism for excessive but meaningless-style,
and this approach simply doesn’t fit the gravity of the narrative.
If
this movie wants us to believe that Lincoln was a man who both freed the slaves and eradicated the vampires, then the
filmmakers should have undertaken steps to make those acts seem believable and
consistent with one another
Instead,
it doesn’t even try.
Like
a lot of politicians and campaigns, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire just insults our
intelligence on a near-constant basis.
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful review, John. I'll admit when I first heard of this film, I had some hopes - I can get behind some well done absurdism, and the title certainly seemed to promise it. Then I saw the first trailer and subsequent TV trailers and that hope had begun to quietly dwindle. It's a shame they went for slick and glossy and didn't really try to give it that extra intellectual edge by skillfully meshing an absurd tale into a rational and respected real life. Ah well.
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased at least that Rufus Sewell is still out there doing things (as I rather enjoyed him in Dark City), though I'll hope a more quality project rolls his way for his next outing.
And as an aside - a co-worker who's seen rated it as being "better than the new Silent Hill movie". One shudders if that's an accurate assessment, though I won't speak to it specifically as I'm not familiar with the franchise. Still, it's rather like the famous mis-written advertising sign : "Our Best is None Too Good."
I sorta liked the horse stampede sequence just for being so rubbery surreal -- kind of its own little demo movie. I also liked the scene where Mary Todd (my girlfriend, MEW) dispenses justice.
ReplyDeleteEverything else was pretty forgettable.
Thank you for posting your detailed review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, John. I was in my office at DISH on Friday afternoon when I saw that this movie was available. I went online and ordered it to download to my DISH Hopper DVR just before leaving for the day. It was downloaded and ready to watch by the time got to my door. After watching it, I have to say that I’m with you on this one; Abe Lincoln: Vamp Hunter wants very desperately to be a cult classic, but it takes it self too seriously and the budget was too big. Had they taken a lighter tone, I wouldn’t have a problem with an uncharacteristically unthinking Lincoln, because B movie horror/comedies aren’t exactly known for their logic.
ReplyDeleteThe movie looked irrelevant and apparently is.
ReplyDeleteBut John....You had me at "Bad Mutha-Fucka-ism". I hope you don't have that patented, because I'm using that!
They spent a lot of time and effort making Abraham Lincoln look like a bad-ass, when the real article was plenty bad-ass already!
ReplyDelete