Great basic idea, boring execution

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2012)

On the paper this film sounds great. One of the most iconic presidents of all time traveling across the early USA, killing vampires with an axe-shotgun and taking names. Sure it's corny and over the top, but sometimes that's exactly what we need to be entertained.
On some levels, this film delivers exactly what it promises. There is a lot of fighting and many action scenes, which are usually very solid and entertaining. Especially the numerous slow-motion shots were very pleasing to look at in my opinion, though that's just my personal cup of tea, as I know that some don't like them at all. Guess I haven't gotten my fair fill of them yet. Additionally, the lore and mythos of this film manage to work on a reasonable level. The vampires aren't anything special, but they're not laughably erroneous either, like some others I could mention if I wasn't sure that you all already know which vampires I'm talking about. So the action and the vampires do work. Sure some of the action scenes are a bit too... outlandish and hard to take seriously, but I wasn't really expecting anything else, so it didn't bother me all that much. Add in some nice period costumes and a decent, though a tad forgettable score, and the film has a nice basic framework all set up.
So what went wrong? Well, the movie is pretty boring for one, which is astonishing given that it's a film about Abraham Lincoln. Killing vampires. With an axe-shotgun. In slow-motion. For that concept to end up being boring is just plain wrong, but unfortunately it's the truth. The actors all do a decent job, but the characters that they play are colourless, without any characteristics aside from a few initially established quirks. One of them is a womanizer, one of them is a bit naive, one of them is evil, and that's about it. Furthermore, the story isn't all that exciting either. Yet again it's not bad, but it's just... colourless. No creativity, no original ideas, no soul. It's there to move the film from one action scene to another, nothing more.
And really, in some movies the nonexistent story can be forgiven, especially if their purpose is to be nothing more than an action-packed slugfest. But usually those movies are self-conscious about the lack of story and compensate by being extremely flashy and showboating. This film however actually seems to believe that it has a worthwhile story to tell and thus tries it hardest, making it ever so worse in the process.
So to whom I might recommend this film? Well, if vampire films are your thing and you've resigned yourself to the fact that the story isn't going to be anything special, then I think that there are worse ways to spend an hour or two. This movie isn't terrible by any means, and for the fans of fantasy action it's even somewhat decent. If only the story had had a bit more originality, then this might have become a great guilty pleasure for me.