A fun film, but not without flaws

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2012)

It was good to see an original idea on the big screen. In a year full of sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots and even one film that was all the above, it was refreshing to see a film that didn't rely on a past film.
The first thing that got me was the low resolution camera. I don't usually even look at stuff like that, but when I see YouTube videos with more high definition clarity – I do wonder what on earth this film was shot on. Many of the shots were unfocused or simply lacked the clarity that I'm use to. Everything had been colour graded to make it look old and pastel like. I can hear some of you say its to give us the atmosphere of age – but there have been many films set in the past and they didn't need to 'age' the film to get us in the mood. When it's on the big screen, I really want to see each and every hair on the actors head shine through – you simply did not get that with this film.
They never even bothered to explain how these Vampires could walk around in sunlight. At one point they mentioned sun block but that got ridiculous pretty quick. The same goes for crucifixes, holy water, entering a person's home uninvited and all that stuff; it was all ignored. There were no stakes thrust through the heart and for some reason, a vampire shot in the head decides to keep the lodged bullet in himself for no reason other than why not. When he can turn to dust, you wonder why the bullet didn't just drop to the floor anyway. Vampires cannot kill each other, but you can hit them many, many times – and maybe accidentally kill them. When Adam thought there was silver in the box and tried to kill Henry on the train – how was he able to even attempt to kill him? It simply didn't make sense.
The acting was good and I was hooked throughout the film. The action was wicked and the camera kept focus on all that was happening without moving about too much which was good. There were lots of decapitations and yet they found as many different ways to kill a vampire in the same method which was interesting and stopped it from getting repetitive.
We were never informed about the main bad guys – who they were, where they came from, what their motives were or why there was a chain of command. They were simply there because the film needed a bad guy and a bunch of cannon fodder to get killed.
Mary was engaged at the start of the film to Stephen – yet started dating Abraham while still engaged with no opposition, and then got married. The story arch between her and Stephen I'm presuming was cut out in the edit room as it really made no sense why Stephen just vanished from the film.
There was a lot of politics, interwoven into a vampire story and at times it felt like you were watching two different films edited together. Maybe even three if the subplot between Stephen and Mary hadn't been cut out, and maybe even four if we learnt more about his rise to Presidency, which seemed to happen overnight.
Its worth watching, but I wanted more answers and explanations for some of the decisions that were made and it made a few artistic choices too many in my opinion – such as Vampires in sunlight – oh well, at least they didn't sparkle!