The Sunnydale Address

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER is a gimmicky film based on a gimmicky book. That much gimmickry should be fun. But it isn’t! I did that head nodding, eyes closing, jerking-awake-in-panic thing four times while enduring Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter—two of which were during the climax, in which a train crashes across a bridge that is also on fire while vampires attack it. Yet: boring! I don’t even.

Also: These vampires, right!? They go in the sun (they wear sunscreen and sunglasses), they turn invisible (because vampires are ghosts?), they know kung fu (okay!), and they loooove slavery (they like to eat black people). EVEN MORE CONFUSING: Honest Abe doesn’t even go Buffy very often. The filmmakers are under the delusion that anyone who would willingly say, “One for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, please!” would be more interested in the “Abraham Lincoln” part than the “vampire hunter” part. Insanity.

BUT. There’s one non-boring, non-inept scene: It’s 99.99 percent cheap CG, and Abe Lincoln fights a vampire… in a horse stampede! Abe and the vampire run across horses’ backs, and jump up and down on horses, and the vampire throws a horse at Abraham Lincoln, and then, right when you think the 16th President of the United States is going to kill the vampire with his axe? Turns out Abe’s ol’ axe is also a gun. BOOM. Now that’s a gimmick.