Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
Starring Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Rufus Sewell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead
One of the many summer films I had been looking forward to was Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The movie is adapted from a popular book of the same title. I did not read the book so I won’t be able to compare the text to the film, but from what I’ve heard from others, there are a few differences. If you would like to let me know what those differences are then feel free to comment below. The film is pretty much exactly what the title says. It’s an alternate take on the life of Abraham Lincoln. In this version of his life he loses his mother at a very young age after witnessing a vampire murder her in the middle of the night, this causes Abe to form a distinct hatred of vampires and he in turn devotes a large portion of his life to destroying them. The film is definitely not the most historically accurate film, nor is it supposed to be. If you overanalyze the subject matter you probably won’t enjoy it. It is more-so along the lines of films like Wild Wild West and Jonah Hex, except much more entertaining. I wouldn’t have minded a few giant mechanical spiders in the film though.
The story itself starts off with Lincoln as a young boy, and then quickly jumps to his life as a young adult. There is no mention of his life in Kentucky which was unfortunate considering I’m a Kentucky native myself and would have liked to have seen more about that. Also thought we’d see something about his wrestling hobby, but I guess they only had so much time and couldn’t really touch on all the aspects of Lincoln’s life. Lincoln’s main goal at the beginning of the film is to track down the exact vampire that was responsible for killing his mother. This is not very hard since the vampire has been running the same shipping port since he was a child and still works in the same exact place. One thing that is rather convenient in the film is that the vampires can work and function in the daylight if they wear sunglasses and put on some type of extra strength suntan lotion. I thought this was a bit goofy but given the tone of the film I accepted it. It also helps explain why the vampires could be present on the battlefield during the Civil war (which I will get to later). In his search for vengeance Lincoln meets a few interesting characters along the way, some familiar to history buffs, some not. Lincoln encounters a man by the name of Henry Sturgess who actually becomes a Jedi master of sorts for young Lincoln. Henry is the one responsible for giving Lincoln some much needed focus and skill that he would need in his battle against the vampires. There is a great chemistry between Lincoln and Henry and I really enjoyed that aspect of the film. They had a nice Sherlock and Watson thing going on. Since Henry seemed to have a slight British accent I couldn’t help but imagine a BBC spin-off detailing the adventures of these two. As the film progresses Lincoln’s training is finished and he eventually becomes a vampire assassin of sorts. We see all sorts of cool “vampire hunting” sequences as a result, which delivers every time. The only pet peeve I have about some of the action sequences are the fact that at times Lincoln displays skills that no normal human would have. He seems to have super strength and super agility, despite the fact that he is not a vampire. This is never really explained other than the fact that he is just…a badass. Seeing Lincoln make use of the axe he wields is probably the highlight of the film. The moments when Lincoln is swinging his axe around like the lost member of the ninja turtles…priceless.
As far as the historical ties that the film has, there are a few. Several key players in history from that time period appear in the film. We see Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd Lincoln played by the always beautiful Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a small appearance by Harriet Tubman, and the incredibly charismatic Alan Tudyk as Lincoln’s political rival Stephen Douglas. The portrayal of Lincoln’s wife worked out pretty well but I was pretty letdown by the short screen time given to Alan Tudyk. Tudyk is one of my favorite actors and I think the film would have been served well by giving him a bigger role. There is also an interesting alternate take on the battle of Gettysburg which makes for a fun “what if” scenario. Unfortunately the film does not feature Stonewall Jackson and I thought that was a missed opportunity considering the asylum used his character in “Abe Lincoln vs. Zombies” and it actually worked in that one.
