I know what you're thinking and no I'm not kidding. I am dead serious.
I saw the title and immediately thought "OH MY GOD I MUST SEE THIS MOVIE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE".
So tonight I did.
Honestly, as far as what I expected..... I expected more of it.
See, from the trailer it was very obvious that this movie took itself super seriously, which is exactly why I was so eager to see it. It's bound to be hilarious, right? Such a stupid concept combined with such a dead serious tone is just a recipe for laughs, I think we know that by now. And there were a few times where it actually was really freakin' funny. Like, the part where they're fighting in the middle of a horse stampede (and somehow no one's getting trampled or anything like that) and then the vampire grabs a running horse by the legs, swings around and flings it at Abraham Lincoln. I will admit, I laughed for five straight minutes at that, it was just the funniest thing. And then Abraham Lincoln's silver dipped ax also conveniently converts into a gun if you pull off the blade. Seems legit, right? I laughed so hard. Not to mention all the fight scenes where for some reasons the lights turn off when the fight happens and turn back on the minute it's over, with the random guitar riffs in the background. You better believe I laughed.
The problem is that there just wasn't enough of that stuff for me to enjoy it as much as I'd anticipated. I mean, there aren't many times where you're going to see me dissing a movie because it wasn't stupid enough, but seriously, this movie wasn't stupid enough. The thing is, if you're doing a movie about Abraham Lincoln fighting slavery not because of, y'know, equal rights and abuse and all that stuff, but because all the Confederate slave owners were vampires, you need to go all out with it, okay? Don't be stopping short at, well, at anything. We need more vampires flinging horses around. I mean, how about instead of that cliche fighting on top of a moving train, why don't we just have a vampire throw the train at someone? THAT would have been great.
Now, my reading of the (utterly FANTASTIC) novel Dracula, along with my unhealthy obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer kinda means that I have a healthy library of knowledge about the mythology of vampires, okay? For instance, fun fact, the original vampires were probably just people with rabies or similar diseases, because rabies would A) make people bite other people, B) Make them sensitive to sunlight, and C) Make them sensitive to garlic. Wasn't that fact fun?
And this was completely not the point of the movie at all, but it irritated me because they got the mythology of the vampire TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY WRONG.
Silver does not hold off a vampire. Silver will hold off a werewolf, not a vampire. Therefore, a silver dipped ax (that converts into a rifle) will not be any more effective than an ordinary ax (that converts into a rifle). Silver bullets will kill a werewolf, not a vampire. I mean, you've got your holy water, your crosses, your garlic. Why not dip your ax in holy water? Whatever.
Also, just repeatedly chopping an ax into a vampire, as bizarre as it seems, will not kill it. The ONLY way to kill a vampire is to get them in the heart with a wooden stake, get them in sunlight long enough to burn them to death (the vampires in this movie had no problem with sunlight whatsoever though so whoops) and cut off their heads. That's it. Stop making stuff up, for god's sakes, the mythology of the vampire is already kinda out there, and there's no need to tamper with it.
Also... vampires can be good.
Now that's been a running theme in recent vampire mythology, but the thing is, even in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whose good vampire character was extremely bland and boring (at least on the original show.... his spin-off kinda made him a much easier character to watch) at least it stayed true to the original mythology, because the thing is that vampires lose their souls. They lose what makes them human. That's what makes them demons. DUH DOY. They have the skills and memories of the original person, but lose their soul, which as far as I can tell, entails their conscience and anything that makes them willing to do good, or even willing to avoid badness. Literally all vampires are inherently evil, okay?
So how is it that this vampire character in this movie can just make a snap decision to be good and hate his kind after he was turned? And why aren't other vampires the same way? And the thing is, he still kills people though. I mean, rapists and similar assholes, but he's still killing people. Apparently, since Abraham Lincoln's like his bestie and never makes a move to kill him ever, he's perfectly fine with that.
But whatever. One should probably not be questioning the logic of a movie such as this one.
The real problem with this movie is that I was looking forward to something like Rocky Horror Picture Show and ended up getting Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. If you don't know those movie references you need to start watching some movies.
Took itself way too seriously. That was the problem. And that was part of the reason the funny parts were funny, but it just tried way too hard.
Plus, it wasn't even THAT good of a story.
I feel sad because I was really expecting to like it more.
Oh well.
2.5/5 stars.
P.S This is the second movie I've seen where the guy who plays Wash on Firefly plays a racist asshat. In this movie he's a politician trying to do away with the abolition act, and also in the movie 42 (which is a really good movie that I seriously recommend you watch - it's about Jackie Robinson, who was the first black major league baseball player) he plays a baseball player who continually shouts the N word at the black player.
I'm not sure what exactly this says about the actor, it's just an observation.
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