Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

What makes Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter special is its audacious promise: it takes a monument of American history and lets him loose in a pulpy, moonlit fever dream where the battlefield is also a horror show. Timur Bekmambetov directs with a kinetic, comic-book grandeur—axes swing like exclamation points, shadows stretch, and the action moves with such muscular style that you can feel the movie grinning as it goes. Benjamin Walker sells the straight-faced conviction at the center, which is exactly why the wild alternate-history idea works: the film commits, hard, and invites you to have fun with it. It’s not for viewers who want sober historical drama or restrained violence, but if you’re in the mood for an R-rated, high-energy genre mash-up that’s gleefully original, this one delivers the goods.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is clearly trying to mash up American mythmaking with pulpy vampire mayhem, and on paper that’s a gloriously stupid idea in the best possible way. The problem is it plays the premise with a straight face so often that the fun drains out, leaving you with noisy, repetitive action and a lot of grim, R-rated brutality that starts to feel like work rather than entertainment. Bekmambetov delivers some slick visuals and a couple of enjoyably over-the-top set pieces, and the cast commits, but the movie rarely finds the wink or momentum that would make it truly satisfying. If you want camp, clever satire, or laughs with your genre mashup, this probably isn’t for you; if you’re fine with style-forward violence and a serious tone stapled to a ridiculous concept, you might get enough out of it.