Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
President Lincoln's mother is killed by a supernatural creature, which fuels his passion to crush vampires and their slave-owning helpers.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who kick-started the literary strand of the movement with 2009 parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (itself once the subject of a seemingly-on-ice big screen adaptation). The latter sees Jane Austen's regency romance filleted with rampaging representatives of the undead, while the former repositions the famous US president as the keen-eyed nemesis of swarming bloodsuckers everywhere. The book's most cunning conceit, by the way, is Grahame-Smith's decision to recast the abolitionist movement as the result of a campaign to stop the vampires buying up slaves and using them for fuel: the American civil war is therefore repositioned as the direct outcome of an invasion of the undead.
Vampire Hunter is Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, while Abe himself is played by US newcomer Benjamin Walker, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, Dominic Cooper as his undead-hunting mentor Henry Sturges and the always good-value Rufus Sewell as a particularly nasty vamp. Not a bad cast then, and the visual stuff looks impressive, but it's surely going to take some radical film-making panache to make this one stand out from the crowd.
The movie follows the life of the Abe we've all come to know and love, with some slight tweaks to his back-story, as well as his secret life of vampire hunting. Born into an age when vampires are being flushed out of Europe, young Abraham seeks vengeance when members of his family are victims of vampire violence. Once elected president, he uses the Civil War to halt the hostile takeover of America by the bloodsucking bunch of invaders, and gruesome, glorious vampire slaying ensues. Vampire Hunter is Grahame-Smith's follow-up to the equally absurd/awesome novel ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', a mashup of the classic Jane Austen novel and a zombie story, which has also been optioned for a film version, but has hit many roadblocks along the way to the silver screen.
This historical 3D supernatural thriller, a genre combination that I never thought I'd have to put together, is set to hit the cinemas on June 22, 2012. It stars Benjamin Walker as Abraham Lincoln, Mary Elizabeth Winstead of ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs The World' as Mary Todd Lincoln, and the pilot of Serenity himself, Alan Tudyk, as Stephen A. Douglas, the political rival of Lincoln.
In the meantime, does this particular incarnation of Abe Lincoln make you want to belt out the Star-Spangled Banner, or weep tears of distress at the depths to which modern American cinema has sunk in the name of bloody spectacle?
Personally, I can't wait to see Abe demolish that tree with one mighty swing at the end of the trailer, among other things, on the big screen and in 3D.