The third in my trilogy of disappointment. I wanted to like it, there were even individual scenes I liked, but it didn't hold together for me. And this is the most disappointing, since I paid more than $1 for it. In fact, I even paid extra for 3-D.
So let's start there. The 3-D is competent, maybe even technically impressive, but of course violates Jason's Rule of 3-D in spades (reminder: Jason's rule--inspired by CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS--states that 3-D is most effective in putting depth into the screen. When it's used to throw stuff out of the screen, the illusion breaks and it's revealed to be nothing more than gimmicky bullshit.)
As for the story...well, it's a neat conceit that's revealed in the title, so I can't complain about that. Abraham Lincoln as a child witnesses his mother's murder. His father insists that he not seek revenge, but as soon as he's dead Abraham (Benjamin Walker) breaks that promise, only to find his mother's killer is in fact a vampire. He's narrowly rescued by Henry (Rufus Sewell) who tells him about vampires and trains him to kill them. Abraham chooses as his weapon a silvered axe. Then it goes off on weird tangents about how the South is controlled by vampires, how slavery is secretly a source of easy food for them, and how they have designs on taking over the whole of the new world and forming a nation of their own (also, they can walk in the daylight. Apparently sunscreen of that time was awesome.) Henry sends Abraham to Springfield to do his work, with the admonishment to stay quiet and have no friends or family. So Abraham meets Mary Todd, kills a few vampires, and then gets into politics, all breaking Henry's rules. Then they completely skip over his political career (barely glossing over his debates with Stephen Douglas, even though their rivalry is built up quite a bit over the first half) and next thing you know it's the middle of the Civil War, and the vampires are about to attack Gettysburg. And then it just devolves into nonsense.
There were scenes I liked, but this film can be dropped on the rare (but not rare enough) pile of movies where the poster is more interesting than the actual film.
Running Time: 105 minutes
My Total Minutes: 288,594
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