6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them.
Starring: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus SewellAction | 100% |
Fantasy | 63% |
Thriller | 41% |
Horror | 29% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 MVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Russian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1
Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Turkish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Ukrainian: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (2 BDs, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Blu-ray 3D
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Read that again: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Now, what do you expect? A cinematic civics
lesson? A solemn Glory-style war epic? A gravely faithful biopic of America's bearded, slave-freeing 16th president? Yeah, I didn't think so. The
title suggests something entirely different—gory, ax-swinging violence, campy horror-meets-history revisionism, and a wink-wink take on good ol' 6'4"
Honest Abe, the POTUS who's come closest to approaching mythic, tall-tale status in our national consciousness. No one's going to confuse
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter with the upcoming Steven Spielberg Lincoln drama, and complaining that the film isn't "historically
accurate enough" totally misses the point, akin to dismissing 300 because it grossly distorts the real Battle of Thermopylae.
Hold onto your war horses, though. I'm no Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter apologist. There are plenty of other criticisms that can be leveled
at the film, criticisms that stem from the disconnect between what the over-the-top title promises and what the final finished product actually delivers.
If I had to boil it down to one issue, it's that the movie—which was written by Seth Grahame-Smith, the author of the novel it's based on—doesn't go
far enough into history-overturning, vamp-slaying ridiculousness. It mistakenly tries to retain some semblance of seriousness, when it
probably should've gone all-out absurd.
The Young Mr. Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a tricky title to judge, picture quality-wise, and that's before we even get to talking about the post-
production 3D conversion. The film was shot predominantly on 35mm, with mixed in footage from the digital Arri Alexa high definition camera and the
Phantom Flex, a high-speed system for slow-motion shots. The varied sources aren't an issue, and though the picture is quite grainy most of the time, at
least 20th Century Fox hasn't tried to smear away the noise with DNR. That said, the image does have a somewhat unnatural and distinctly "processed"
look that's simply too stylized for its own good. The color grading often has the excessive quality of an over-filtered Instagram photo, with blooming
highlights that give people and objects a weird glow, and antiqued hues—see Henry's green and red-toned flashback scene—that want to evoke era-
appropriate photography but just look cheap and fake and digitized. While the image is never as sharp as Lincoln's trusty ax—the grain and filtering take
their toll on overall clarity—there's more than sufficient fine detail here, especially in closeups. Pixel-peepers will notice some overt softness, but if you're
sitting at a normal viewing distance, this isn't an issue. Neither are there any encode or compression problems. I have no doubt that the Blu-ray is
faithful to the filmmakers' intents, but let's just say that some of the choices made regarding the look of the film are a bit gaudy.
There is some good news; although the film wasn't natively shot in 3D, the conversion is actually pretty successful. Yes, there are some flat-ish shots
without much apparent depth, and sure, there are times when foreground objects look a little like cardboard cutouts, but for the most part, the picture
has a satisfying sense of dimensionality. Given the subject matter, you can expect a few gimmicky jump-out-of-the-screen-type shots—a whip flying
toward our faces, a bullet emerging from a pistol barrel, etc.—but most of the time we're looking into the window of the screen. I was really
impressed by the look of atmospherics—for the lack of a better word—from drifting embers and swirling clouds of dust to heavy rain and floating motes
carried about on sunbeams. The picture definitely has a "living" quality. And, yep, there are some showpiece shots too, particularly in the horse
stampede and Gettysburg battle sequence. Don't turn your nose up at Vampire Hunter just because it wasn't shot with an honest-to-goodness
3D rig; the added-in-post dimensionality here works surprisingly well.
Note that all screenshots in this review are from the 2D version.
How's the audio? Well, I'm glad you axed. (Shoot me now.) Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter grips up on Blu-ray with a brutal lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track. This thing delivers some seriously heavy blows. The mix starts with near-constant ambience—frogs and insects, wind and pouring rain, the clamor of battle—and then adds pinpoint directional sounds and fluid cross-channel motions. Boots on creaking wooden floorboards behind us. Lincoln's ax swinging through the rears. Horse hooves beating the dusty earth in all directions. Debris shooting out and settling after an explosion. Bullets whistling between speakers and potent cannon fire. Vampiric cackles and groans. A train chugging madly across the landscape. It's all heavy-duty, carefully engineered sonic stuff, with great clarity and plenty of dynamic punch. Don't sit a drink on top of your subwoofer, because the massive waves of bass will rattle it right off in no time. X-Men: First Class composer Henry Jackman's score riffs with anachronistic guitars and tense, amped up orchestral elements, and it too sounds beefy and clear and clean. Through it all, dialogue is balanced and easy to understand. Subtitle and dub options are plentiful; see above for details.
Who'd've thought a film called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter could be so dull and routine? This tepid exercise in injecting the supernatural into the historical delivers the usual blockbuster action sequences—think a period-piece version of the Underworld films—but fails to fully exploit the promise of its kooky central premise. The film is simply too straight-faced for its own good. (Hypothetically, I like to imagine Ben Franklin: Succubus Slayer would've made a better film.) Vampire Hunter makes a solid turn on Blu-ray, with a strong-if-overstylized picture and killer sound, but I'd advise a rental over a purchase.
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