Movie review: 'Abraham Lincoln' good at killing vampires, bad at pacing

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Abraham Lincoln had a fair amount of accomplishments during his presidency. Whether it was keeping the country together through the Civil War or granting freedom to millions of slaves, Lincoln was a good man.

However, what many don’t know about him is he also kept the United States free from the tyranny of vampires.

Although that last fact isn’t true, it is the premise of the movie “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” which is based off the best-selling book by Seth Grahame-Smith.

The movie begins with Lincoln as a young child seeing his mother slain by a mysterious man. From that point, Lincoln swears he will avenge the death of his mother by killing the person who murdered her.

Ten years later, Lincoln encounters the man in a bar and promptly leads him outside to kill him. But after shooting him, the mysterious man reveals that he is a vampire.

Just as the vampire is about to send Lincoln the same way as his mother, a man by the name of Henry Sturgess punches the vampire through a wall and escapes with an unconscious Lincoln.

Lincoln wakes up to find out that Sturgess is actually a vampire hunter, and he quickly wishes to join him in order to kill the vampire that killed his mother.

Lincoln — not a big fan of using guns — chooses a tree axe to be his weapon of choice for slaying the vampires. After an intensive trial-and-error training regimen, he earns the title of Vampire Hunter.

The rest of the movie consists of Lincoln killing vampires and eventually becoming the president of the United States.

I will be honest — I really wanted to see this movie. But after seeing it, I have quite a few complaints about the film that made it disappointing.

The pacing of the entire film (especially the first half) was awful. One moment, Lincoln would be in the swamps of the South, then without warning, the movie would flash forward to another scene that takes place days, weeks or years later. Not only did this make the movie hard to follow at times, but it also made the entire film just feel rushed.

Another problem I had with this movie was very poor character development. Some of the characters in the movie, including his friends, were simply there for show and had no emotion. They never bothered to give either of his friends backstories, and the same went for his wife, who might have been just as famous as the president himself.

I understand the movie has Lincoln's name in the title, but the movie couldn’t survive by just giving all the camera time to Lincoln.

Although this movie had some problems, there were some things about the movie I really enjoyed, including the cinematography, which has a very smooth “old time” filter to it and made the movie beautiful.

Another good thing was, of course, the gore and killing in the film. Every fight scene consisted of blood and slow-motion effects, similar to that of “The Matrix” and made every vampire encounter enjoyable.

Other than the few good things that made me enjoy the movie, the rest is poorly acted and predictable.

As for myself, I would wait for this movie to come out on DVD. Other than that, it’s not worth your hard-earned money.

Maxwell Meier is a broadcast & electronic media sophomore.

Max Meier

Max is a former staff member of The Oklahoma Daily who worked as Life & Arts Reporter and Sports Reporter.