REVIEW: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Tells the Real Story Behind the Civil War — Not!

It’s not every day you see a movie and ask yourself, “Why does this thing even exist?” But I’m truly puzzled by the existence of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I get that it’s based on a novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, part of a pop literary genre — launched by Grahame-Smith himself — that takes famous figures, fictional or otherwise, and pits them against vampires and zombies. I get that it’s directed by Timur Bekmambetov, the zany Russian-Kazakh mastermind behind cult apocalyptic favorites Night Watch and Day Watch (2004 and 2006, respectively), not to mention the stupidly entertaining 2008 action thriller Wanted. I even grant you that it’s probably OK to make up wholly imaginary motives for why Abraham Lincoln might have wanted to end slavery, motives having to do not with the preservation of human dignity, equality between all people and all that rot, but because it was kind of a handy sideline to the task of ridding the world of vampires. I know and accept all of this. And still I ask — Why?
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