2012 at the Movies #12: Skyfall

It’s unofficial, of course, but if you scrape just beneath the surface of Skyfall (2012) -- the new James Bondthriller -- the designation “M” clearly stands for “Mother” or “Mom.”

Unconventionally, this twenty-third Bond film is a modern action movie concerning a mature woman (played by Judi Dench) who has -- perhaps not fully realizing it -- become the only parent to two grown and needy (or maladjusted…) sons. 

One son, a man called Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), has rebelled against his mother for her sins, choosing to reject all of her lessons because he feels unloved and abandoned.

The other son, James Bond (Daniel Craig), realizes that this powerful mother figure is responsible for giving his life some sense of purpose, and thus goes to extreme, life-and-death measures to protect her from his enraged “brother.”

Also -- and please make no mistake about this fact – the new Bond Girl of Skyfall is clearly M, not Naomie Harris’s Eve, Severine (Berenice Marlohe), or anyone else, for that matter. 

For the first time in Bond history then, the primary Bond/female relationship does not concern sex or romance, but the maternal, mother-son relationship.

On these relatively startling grounds alone, Skyfall distinguishes itself from the twenty-two previous cinematic installments in the James Bond series. 

Delightfully, however, Skyfall also thoroughly re-invents Bond’s place in the world, lamenting the 21^st century reliance on computers and unmanned drones over “human intelligence” in the dangerous game of espionage.  The film thereby forges the (the Luddite?) argument that sometimes the old ways -- like a knife in the back -- still get the job done best.

Skyfall also celebrates fifty years of James Bond movie traditions and history.  Therefore, one can readily gaze at this prominently-featured Luddite argument as a rationalization, as a self-justification, in some sense, for the continuation of the long-running franchise in the second decade of the 21^st century. 

Even today, in the age or push-button soldiers, we need 007. 

This argument about the primacy of human values in the Remote Control Age is so exhilaratingly presented that Skyfall often feels like a grand revelation.  Everything “old” is new again, and this Bond film brilliantly sends Agent 007 into a brave new world, even while re-establishing all the old characters (like Q and Moneypenny) and old genre gimmicks we’ve come to expect (like the Aston Martin’s ejector seat).

It’s quite a deft balancing act, and Skyfall is at once cheeky and legitimately sentimental in tone.  It would be easy to term so exciting and revelatory a Bond film the best series installment in years, but Casino Royale -- just six years in the past -- must still earn high marks for resetting the series, grounding Bond, and introducing Craig.  Without those accomplishments, the highs of Skyfallmight not have been conceivable.

Instead, the arrival of Skyfall forces long-time Bond fans to concretely reckon with the once-impossible-seeming notion that the Sean Connery Era has, at long-last, been surpassed 

Bond is back and -- no hyperbole -- he’s better than ever.

“Mommy was very bad.” 

Skyfall opens in Turkey, as James Bond, 007 (Craig) and an operative named Eve (Harris) attempt to recover a stolen hard-drive that contains the files of every undercover NATO operative working in terrorist organizations. 

Eve is ordered by M (Dench) to take a difficult shot against the possessor of the drive, the evil Patrice (Ola Rapace). But Eve hits Bond instead, thereby losing the drive and an agent.

Some months later, Bond -- who is believed dead -- resurfaces when the MI6 building in London is bombed.  M escapes the attack, but feels political pressure from Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) to explain the loss of the hard-drive, and now a terrorist attack on British soil.

Although he is not yet physically or psychologically ready to return to duty, M nonetheless sends Bond out to track Patrice.  The trail leads Bond to Raoul Silva (Bardem) a vengeful former MI6 agent eager to make M “think on her sins.”   

With Silva launching one terrorist attack after another -- all aimed at killing M -- Bond decides to take his superior off the grid, and back to his family’s long-abandoned country estate in Scotland, called Skyfall.

“Less of a random killing machine, more of a personal statement.”

As I wrote above in my introduction, Skyfall primarily concerns a family dynamic.  In this unusual family, M is the mother, Raoul is one son, and Bond -- believed dead but actually out carousing on the beach -- is the Prodigal Son.

Bond finally returns to save his mother’s life after Raoul enters the picture.   Apparently, Raoul has interpreted M’s dedication to duty as a personal statement against him, a mirror of Bond’s situation.  Silva, however, conveniently overlooks the fact that he was the one who first transgressed on a mission to Hong Kong some years earlier.

Given this family dynamic, Skyfall also concerns -- in a strange way -- the value of forgiveness.  Bond is able to remember that M’s stewardship provided him a home and a purpose, and he forgives her for ordering Eve to take a shot that nearly results in his death. 

M is similarly able to forgive Bond’s trespasses and welcome back the Prodigal Son, the boy who went out into the world with the inheritance of responsibility and purpose and squandered that inheritance on booze, sex, and scorpions.

By contrast, Raoul Silva -- who evidently still loves M (or Mom…) -- can’t see his path to forgiveness, and remains consumed by overwhelming hatred because of Mom’s abandonment.

This family dynamic plays out in Skyfall even in terms of setting and locations. Bond -- a boy forever in search of the parents he tragically lost in childhood -- brings M back to his family estate, Skyfall to play house, after a fashion.  There, 007 also re-connects with an old friend and mentor Kincade (Albert Finney), a surrogate father figure.

The three characters -- working and living together at Skyfall -- are,briefly, a family, replete with a home and a hearth.  Bond thus recreates the family home he never had in his youth.  Raoul arrives and destroys that home, refusing to forgive Mom and rejoin the family.

In exploring this dynamic, Skyfall is perhaps the most human and personal of all the Bond films.  It explores not only the elements of Bond’s tragic and lonely past, but excavates the nature of his (violent) life in terms of how he sees his connections to others.  For Bond, M and Kincade are the only family he can count on when the chips are down, though there is the suggestion that Mallory may become a father figure as well. 

Outside this dramatic through-line, Skyfall establishes a roiling tension and competition between 21^st century espionage and Bondian-style espionage, which came of age during the Cold War of the 1960s. 

This tension is expressed best in the quips back and forth between the mid-life Bond and his young, new Q (or Quartermaster), played by Billie Whishaw.  Q tells Bond that “age is no guarantee of efficiency,” and Bond’s response is that “youth is no guarantee of innovation.” 

In other words, a person with experience and expertise still has something to offer in the world of espionage.

Q also comments explicitly on a painting in an art gallery where he first meets 007.  The painting depicts a warship’s decommissioning. 

“It always makes me feel a bit melancholy,” Q opines. “Grand old war ship…being ignominiously haunted away to scrap... The inevitability of time, don't you think? What do you see?”

What Bond sees, of course, is that he is that old warship, and the one succumbing to the inevitability of time.  

He isn’t as young as he once was, and he faces the possibility that he will soon be obsolete, outmoded in the Remote Control Age.  But the events of Skyfall prove otherwise.  There is still room in the world for Bond’s brand of “human” intelligence.

Even M gets into the act of discussing the present and the past by quoting Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses at a critical dramatic juncture:

“Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' 
We are not now that strength which in old days 
Moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are; 
One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

This is Bond’s gift to the world, and perhaps England’s as well.  Bond and England no longer dictate the movement of Heaven and Earth, but their wills remain strong, and when threatened, they will not yield.  They are, as they have been….heroic hearts.

The emotionally-delivered Tennyson quotation above thus permits Skyfall to proudly re-assert Bond’s importance in the cinema, and even Bond’s place in the world. Jason Bournes and Ethan Hunts of the world be damned, there’s still a place for Bond, James Bond in the 21^stCentury.

The battle between Silva and Bond is not merely one of brothers, but of belief-systems, the film cleverly reminds us.  Silva is the high-tech terrorist hiding behind anonymous servers and diabolical hacks. Meanwhile, Bond is the old-world dinosaur who still enjoys his Aston Martin’s ejector seat, and takes M off the grid, to a brick-and-mortar home he hasn’t seen in years. 

It’s digital vs. analog…and analog carries the day.

The amazing thing is that in our convenient and robust Web 2.0 Age, we root in Skyfall for analog to win. 

We long for the romance and sheer individuality of a character like James Bond.  He calls not upon gadgets, tools, or software to win the day, but some deep internal reservoir of individual will and discipline.  We may be constantly perfecting our tools and gadgets, but Bond has perfected his human mechanism, and in reminding us of that, Skyfall has perfected the Bond formula.

It’s appropriate that the last act of Skyfall involves an all-out siege which is more Peckinpah and Straw Dogs (1971) than Ian Fleming, because the analog world does feel, at times, under siege, doesn’t it?  The Old Guard seems to be crumbling, a brick at a time, and some people view this shift as the End of History, and not as the beginning of Something New, perhaps Something Great. 

In an age of irrational exuberance about gadgets, apps, and computerized military capabilities, James Bond and Skyfall remind us that a reliance on humanity -- on our experience and wisdom-- can be the most potent weapon of all.

Here’s to another fifty years of James Bond and his heroic heart.

2012 at the Movies #11: Silent House

There is a genuine, palpable terror mined in Silent House (2012), a remake of a 2010 Uruguayan horror film, which, in turn, was based on a ‘true story.’ 

This American remake, directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, consists of a handful of ten-minute segments stitched together almost seamlessly, so that it appears as though the film consists of only one, long, continuous shot. 

Thus, as the ads trumpet, Silent House represents horror in “real time,” depicting eighty-eight or so grueling minutes in the life of a frantic, terrified young woman named Sarah.  

There are virtually no lulls in the film, and it is paced expertly and efficiently.  The absence of quick cutting, and indeed, cuts of any type, means that the space “around” Sarah is charted thoroughly, and so fear boasts the opportunity -- like a flower -- to grow, and grow until it reaches full, malevolent blossom.

Some audiences have reportedly felt “ripped off” by Silent House because:

a.) It isn’t actually one continuous shot, but several.

and

b.) There is no supernatural entity in the film, which is how some folks reportedly “interpreted” the ads and trailers, specifically the presence of a young specter-like girl in a nightgown.

When I screened Silent House I was aware of neither viewer complaint, and simply experienced the film as it was “happening” to me.  I had no pre-conceived notions, in other words, and no expectations.  I must honestly report that I felt while watching, at times, an almost overwhelming sense of fear and claustrophobia.  

By revealing to us a single character trapped in one place, for eighty unrelenting minutes, Silent House distills the horror experience down to an impressively pure crucible.  

In short, Silent House concerns the feelings of being trapped alone in a house with a killer, and trying to find some way -- any way -- to escape.  In many important ways, it plays like a nightmare you can't awake from.  All escape attempts end with a return to entrapment, and the chase by the Bogeyman never ceases, even when reality itself seems to break down.

In specific narrative terms, Silent House revolves around poor Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen), who is visiting an old family house in the country with her father and uncle.  The house is to be sold off, and the family members are there to clean it out and pack up their belongings before it goes on the market.

As evening approaches, Sarah is surprised to be visited by an old friend from the neighborhood, one who clearly remembers her, but whom she does not recall at all.  As Sarah points out, she has some gaps in her memory.

Her uncle leaves the house for a while, as the sun goes down, and then Sarah’s father disappears too, leaving the young woman alone in a dark, upstairs room.  She hears strange noises, and then suddenly comes under relentless, non-stop attack by a strange assailant. Sarah hides throughout the house, and finally escapes through the maze-like basement, but the killer is always close-by. 

After she escapes the grounds, Sarah runs into the returning uncle, who brings her right back to the house so they can find her father together. 

Not surprisingly, the killer is still there, and before you know it, Sarah is all alone once more, trying to figure out what is happening to her, and how to stay alive.  In short order, the house itself seems to conspire to keep her a prisoner there…

Silent House tells a very simple, very lean story, and aside from some serious lighting issues at critical junctures, the directors do a fine job of landing us in Sarah’s shoes and generating almost non-stop suspense.  

Olsen’s committed, all-in performance maintains the film’s focus so that when the final revelation occurs, it doesn’t feel like a cheat.  It may not be a total surprise for those of us very experienced with watching horror movies, but nor is it a cheat.

Read no further if you wish to know what’s really going on here.

Still here?

All right, then.

Silent Houseoperates by a very simple, if intriguing premise. The house where Sarah is trapped is, metaphorically-speaking, one of her own making; one of her own mind. 

Returning to this childhood house, she begins to experience unpleasant memories from her childhood, memories that she has kept blocked out and denied for a very long time.  They concern child sexual abuse.

As Sarah navigates the labyrinth of the country house, she is also running through a kind of subjective reality, an experience what can only be described as a psychotic break.  Accordingly, the rooms eventually become twisted manifestations of her fears, changing shape and form in horrifying ways.  One room suddenly explodes with outbreaks of multiplying mold, a literalization of the idea that Sarah somehow feels soiled and ruined by the acts of the abusers.

There are well-placed clues regarding the “truth” about Sarah throughout Silent House, from the odd presence of Sarah’s childhood friend, to the fact that three times during the film, Sarah hides under furniture and is yanked into the open by a stranger’s hand.  This hiding place and pose evokes memories of a “game” she was forced to endure as a little girl. 

And then, of course, there are the photographs that her uncle and father don’t want her to see, which are strewn about…

The only thing that matters is that, in the end, it all tracks.

And the complaints about Silent House? I have a rule about reviewing movies that goes approximately like this:  You can’t review a movie on the basis of what it isn’t.  You have to discuss what it is.  

I’m sorry some viewers felt disappointed that there were no supernatural entities involved here, but I’ve watched the trailer several times, and am not sure why these folks ever believed the film was going to be Paranormal Activity 5 or something of the kind.

And who cares whether the film consists of one shot or ten shots?  If the story is vetted well (and it is), that matters more than whether or not it is crafted in a single continuous take.  Even Hitchcock's Rope wasn't actually a single take, but a few.

In terms of the story it tells, Silent House assembles the pieces relentlessly, until the full, accurate picture of Sarah's suffering forms by movie’s end.  More than that, the (near) continuous nature of the film builds an inescapable, merciless sense of suspense.  Coupled with Olsen’s bravura performance, Silent House really and truly proves terrifying.  I watched the film on streaming (Time Warner Cable) and had some visual problems, because of under-lighting at points.  But I gladly endured such moments because of the feelings of intense fear and entrapment the movie successfully provokes.

Silent House also boasts at least two scenes that I found extremely effective, and even terrifying.  In the first, Sarah realizes there is somebody else in the house, and tries to escape through the basement, a terrain that goes further and further down, almost beyond reality.  She finally arrives at a dead-end -- and a bedroom for squatters -- when her assailant shows up.  In the second extraordinarily suspenseful sequence, Sarah sits alone in her uncle's SUV, and watches in the rear view mirror as the hatch-back door keeps lifting open, apparently of its own volition.  Then, she sees someone climbing into the back seats...

Long story short: Don’t go into Silent House expecting a ghost story, and don’t go just looking for the “seams” in the long takes.  Instead, allow the movie’s immersing techniques and Olsen’s amazing, accomplished performance work their considerable magic, and you’ll find that Silent House is a relatively rare treat: a horror movie that really and truly scares you.

2012 at the Movies #9: Lovely Molly

Lovely Molly (2012), the new horror film from The Blair Witch Project (1999) co-director Eduardo Sanchez, is all about…an empty chair. 

It’s not Clint Eastwood’s empty chair, however, but rather the comfortable-looking easy chair that once belonged to Molly (Gretchen Lodge’s) unsavory but now-deceased father.  That chair appears prominently at least twice in the film -- at critical narrative junctures -- and the notion transmitted is one of a ghostly (and ghastly) figure who hovers over everything, and has a sinister effect upon Molly’s world and very psyche. 

When we first see the empty chair, Molly unearths it from beneath a white sheet.  This act is a metaphor for the bringing-into-the-open of buried memories.  

When we later see the chair again, it is perched inside a messy tool shed.  Here it guards, at least in a sense, the subterranean entrance to a very, verydark place, one decorated, apparently, with a Satanic emblem.  In terms of the metaphor, the memories excavated have now taken root in Molly’s life, and evil comes to the forefront the deeper Molly treads into her own disturbing history.

The symbol of the empty chair is appropriate and resonant in a horror film that so delicately walks the line terms of its psychological subject matter.  In broad strokes, Lovely Molly concerns how Molly’s state of mind deteriorates shortly after she marries Tim (Johnny Lewis) and moves into her family home.  That deterioration is caused either by a demonic possession, or the re-awakening of memories concerning physical and sexual abuse.  The film walks a tightrope of ambivalence for much of its duration, so we aren’t certain at times if we are witnessing a psychological or supernatural descent into madness and violence.

The Bad Father's Empty Chair.

The Bad Father's Empty Chair #2

By the end of the film, the answer is made clear, but rewardingly, Lovely Molly still plays as a commentary on “malefic” psychological influences, whatever their precise nature.  Although it doesn’t rank alongside The Blair Witch Project in terms of impact, and utilizes found-footage, first-person camera techniques only sporadically, Lovely Molly is nonetheless a carefully-wrought, intriguing “cerebral” horror.

But just don’t make the mistake that it’s a fun horror film.  This is a dark, brooding, nihilistic entertainment obsessed with dark acts and human ugliness.  The films’ climax -- which suggests that the cycle of violence and abuse continues -- is thematically legitimate and consistent with the earlier portions of the film, but it permits no light and no optimism to creep into Molly’s world.

“Something is wrong…”

Lovely Mollyfollows a newly married couple, Molly and Tim, as they move into Molly’s family home.  Both of her parents are dead, and people in town frequently allude to the terrible events that occurred there.  Soon after moving in, the home’s security system is triggered, and Molly and Tim find the back door open, and hear footsteps.  A police man (Ken Arnold) finds nothing.

A truck driver, Tim is away most of the time, leaving Molly alone in the house.  Before long, the creepy noises and strange incidents in the house lead Molly to resume her old drug habit.  She starts out with weed, thanks to her sister Hannah (Alexandra Holden), but before long has graduated to heroin.  Molly grows increasingly unstable, and increasingly convinced that she is being haunted by the spirit of her dead father, a man who abused both his daughters.

Soon, Molly loses her blue-collar job, and her spiral towards madness accelerates.  She begins spying with a video camera on a happy family living next door.  And then she attempts to seduce Pastor Bobby (Field Blauvelt), the preacher who officiated at her wedding.  

Soon, Molly graduates to murder, though all the while she insists that isn’t her doing the killing.  Rather, it’s “him” (meaning her father…).

“It’s not me.  It’s Him.”

Is she mad or possessed?

One quality that really stands out regarding Lovely Molly involves the lifestyle of Molly and Tim.  They both work blue-collar jobs and are experiencing real problems making ends meet.   When Molly begins to show signs of mental illness, she insists she can handle it, because there is no other option.  “We don’t have health insurance,” she reports. 

Similarly, Molly goes to her job exhausted from the nocturnal visits of the (apparent) malevolent spirit, but begs her concerned boss to stay at work because she “needs the hours.”   

Again and again, the filmmaker paints a powerful picture of economic calamity, and the vise grip of unpaid bills and responsibilities.

This is an important aspect of the film’s tapestry, because so often in mainstream Hollywood -- even in horror films -- those who are struggling financially are portrayed as living in arts-and-crafts mansions, without even a nod to economic reality.  The sense of economic desperation pervading Lovely Molly makes the film all the more ominous and tense.  Molly and her husband are people with few options, and fewer escape valves.  Accordingly, when Molly falls sick and can’t visit a doctor, she falls back on religion (not a therapist), choosing to talking to a preacher.  Pastor Bobby doesn’t exactly prove helpful.

In terms of the film’s approach to its tricky psychological subject matter, I appreciate how, for much of Lovely Molly, events can be interpreted in two ways.   After one bout of madness, for instance, a horrid stench infiltrates the house.  You’ll think immediately of brimstone and the Devil. 

But then we learn that Molly has hidden a rotting deer carcass in the basement. 

Similarly, creaky doors and ringing security alarms can suggest the presence of a ghost…or merely the wind.   Lovely Molly is admirably subtle and opaque in its storytelling, until one blazing but resonant image occurs at the denouement.  It’s one that will take root in your imagination, if you let it. 

Alone, mad and weak, Molly steps out of her house into a misty front yard, and there, an answer to the puzzle is revealed, albeit briefly.  Reading the image literally, the existence of the supernatural is plain.

But even metaphorically, the image could be read as an embrace of madness, brought on by drug use. Lovely Molly is not a straight-forward found footage horror film, and that fact allows the director some flexibility in terms of storytelling.  Sometimes the film is a conventional drama, with the camera adopting a formal third-person perspective.  But at other moments, Molly picks up a video camera and we see the world through her (mad) eyes.  She becomes insistent upon and obsessive about chronicling the presence of her abusive -- and apparently dead -- father in the house. 

In these found footage-styled moments, the film is indeed reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project and its deliberate uncertainty about “seeing.”  In that film, the camera provided a filter to reality, and nobody could agree on what was happening in the woods, despite the presence of video tape and film as impartial observers.  Here, similarly, the camera is never positioned quite right to see any spirits, even though we hear Molly screaming and crying for help. 

One scene that conforms to this approach involves a store’s surveillance video.  In this video, Molly pulls down her pants, and goes through the (disturbing) motions of being savagely raped from behind.  But no rapist is visible.  Either she is bonkers, or there is an invisible force attacking her.  Again, there’s simply no easy or certain answer about what is happening to Molly.  The more cameras are rolling, it seems, the less we actually “see” (or can agree we’ve seen.) 

Again, Lovely Molly offers the engaged viewer the opportunity to interpret the narrative through the rubric of sexual/physical abuse.  Such abuse occurs all too frequently, we know by the facts, and yet many family members and friends make a point not to see it.  We watch Molly’s rape, likewise, and don’t really see it.

What is really happening here?  Even the camera can't tell us for certain.

At a point about two-thirds of the way through the film, Molly -- either mad or possessed – commits a genuinely awful act against an innocent, and I must admit that I found myself troubled and disturbed by these visuals.  I don’t want to state that the film is depressing, but I should make plain that it isn’t an easy watch, or mere entertainment.  Rather, Lovely Molly is hard core in a sense, and really, that’s a valid and legitimate artistic approach given the seriousness of the subject matter.

If the idea is that the cycle of abuse in families is transmitted -- demon possession-like from one generation to the next -- then a film could hardly have treated the subject matter more artfully or more respectfully than does this one. 

Lovely Molly is a legitimate and consistent work of art, with some occasional scares, and it peers, eyes wide,  into the very heart of human darkness.  Gretchen Lodge must be commended for a gutsy, courageous, unblinking lead performance that reminded me of Barbara Hershey's in The Entity (1983), or Mia Farrow's in Rosemary's Baby (1968).   I must admit that I feel torn between praising it as a serious, carefully-crafted and meaningful horror film and wishing that, in some sense, it was more unpredictable or fresh.   But that predictability too may be the point, actually.  

Once you get a look at the empty chair, and realize the emotional burden that Molly carries, the horror in her life is indeed inescapable.

2012 at the Movies #8: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter(2012) doesn't earn my vote. 

Like some presidential campaigns of recent vintage, this 2012 movie from director Timur Bekmambetov is all style and no substance. 

Worse, much of the visual style in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunterdoesn’t make sense within the confines of a grounded historical fantasy.  Rather, the-you’ve-seen-it-all-before, slow-down/speed-up, Physics-defying fight sequences merely exemplify a terminal case of BMF-ism. 

That’s Bad Mutha-Fucka-ism, meaning that the images are designed to look ultra-cool, but boast no grounding in the movie’s actual narrative or themes.  Characters like Lincoln can thus defy gravity because…they can, not because they possess special abilities or powers, in other words.  By contrast, in The Matrix (1999), bullet time and other laws-of-nature-defying fight moves could be rationalized in a meaningful way that tied in with the story of life as a computer simulation. But not here.

Beyond this concern, Abraham Lincoln -- a man known for his stance that the freedom of all men must be recognized and maintained (per the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863) -- here relegates an entire race (the vampire nation) to bloody death because he believes, essentially, in stereotypes.

If some vampires are murderous, they mustall be murderous, he concludes.  Lincoln believes in this stereotype fervently despite the fact that one of his most trusted allies, Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper) is a heroic and noble vampire.  This fact hardly gives him pause.

In short, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is bad fantasy and bad history, and that makes it a very bad movie indeed.  A tremendous amount of money was sunk into the film in hopes that the audience will avoid this conclusion, but Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is ultimately uninvolving on a human level, even if it blows up things “real good.”

“History remembers the battle, but forgets the blood.”

Young Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) sees his mother die at the hands of a man named Barts (Marton Csokas), a vampire.  Nine years later, an adult Lincoln swears vengeance for her death.  He becomes allied with a man named Henry, who offers Lincoln the opportunity to train as a vampire hunter.

Lincoln accepts, and soon learns that vampires are thriving throughout the Southern United States.  They are led by a man called Adam (Rufus Sewell) and an enforcer named Vadonna (Erin Wasson), his sister. 

Lincoln moves to Springfield, Illinois to work in a local shop by day, and hunt vampires by night.  He soon meets the love of his life, Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and moves into politics.

Eventually Abraham Lincoln ascends to the White House and prosecutes the Civil War.  He learns that vampires are planning to aid Jefferson Davis (John Rothman) in a plan to destroy the Union, and draws the final battle lines…

“I shall kill them all!”

I haven’t read the book by Seth Grahame-Smith, so I can make no judicious commentary on its quality, or whether or not the film faithfully follows the details of the literary source.  What I can state rather unequivocally is that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the movie, leaves plenty of gaps in its discourse.

The most irritating of these gaps involves Lincoln’s shift from vampire hunting to politicking.  He decides that he needs a “contingency plan” for his life, and so goes into politics where he can make use of his skills in persuasion.  The film completely glosses over Lincoln’s campaign to win the Presidency, a place where any discussion of blood-sucking vampires might have been funny and pointed, and so we lose track of our connection to the character.

Also, it floors me that any film about Abraham Lincoln would transform perhaps the ultimate “conviction” politician into a guy who ran for president just because he needed “a contingency plan” in his life.   

The half-assed way the film covers politics and Lincoln’s decision to move into politics is borderline insulting, but also, in terms of the drama, it just doesn’t work.  The film could have followed two possible courses that would have made the choice to pursue the Presidency meaningful.  Lincoln could have become President because he wished to quash injustice in our land.  Or he could have become President because he knew what dangers (vampires!) lurked just beneath the surface.  Why the film wouldn’t at least pay lip service to one approach or the other is baffling.  Perhaps we’ve just become so cynical as a society that we can’t believe a man would seek high office to help other people.

I also really find it incredibly disturbing that this film would categorize the Lincoln of the Emancipation Proclamation as a man who would sanction and prosecute what is essentially genocide without some very deep contemplation.  But the film simply avoids a discussion of vampire nature here.

Why is Henry good, but other vampires are bad?  Aren’t there other good vampires too?  Are we to believe there is only one good vampire?  The Civil War pit brother against brother, so is it too much to believe that it might have pit some vampires against other vampires?  Would all blindly follow Adams call to bloody violence against humanity?

It’s true that I don’t automatically expect sympathy or equal rights for vampires in all horror movies.  But Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter -- because of its time period and central character -- exists on a terrain that demands some discussion or debate of this subject matter.  It can’t just avoid the question in favor of more cool fight scenes and expected to be regarded positively.

It seems to me that, historically speaking, part of Abraham Lincoln’s courage came from the fact that he could see beyond the prevailing stereotypes and nonsense about blacks being of an inferior breed.  He recognized that slaves are men too, and thus deserve the same rights as all men. 

So it just doesn’t make any sense that the same man who could visualize that greater perspective of racial justice would gaze narrowly at vampires and assume that every individual vampire is a drooling abomination, especially since he has evidence that this is not so in Henry.

In real life, Lincoln was a politician who spoke out against unnecessary violence and warmongering (such as the Mexican-American War) and so this idea of him as some unthinking agent of genocide, even against vampires, doesn’t work for me.

But of course, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter isn’t interested in either politics or painting a realistic historical portrait of Lincoln, the man.  No real, substantive tie is made between the evil of slavery and the evil of vampires in the film.  It’s lightly touched on, but not deeply considered.

Unfortunately, the film isn’t interested in satire, either.  The title suggests a degree of intellectual absurdity and playfulness thatAbraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter completely fails to capitalize on.  The film could have been an action-packed satire about politics as “blood sport,” but instead it boasts almost no humor whatsoever, except from the humor audiences may locate themselves in seeing a tall-hatted, lanky Abe Lincoln wield an axe while jumping over train cars and battling vampires.   

I imagine some folks will probably read this review and say, come on, John, it’s just supposed to be an entertaining movie.  Don’t overthink it.  

Well, the problem there is that the movie only entertains in hiccupping fits and starts.  Some visuals are powerful, to be certain, like a battle amid a horse stampede, or the final, fiery combat over a burning bridge. 

But between these admittedly-spiky visuals, almost nothing interesting happens.  The movie jumps over all the intriguing events in Lincoln’s life, including his bid for the Presidency, and even his first campaign to win in the House of Representatives…just to get to ridiculously-styled vampire fights.

And those fights just aren’t good enough to carry the day. I’m a strong proponent of the belief that especially in fantasy films, some rules must be observed.  If we are to imagine a world of dragons, or Hobbits, or even vampires, we must see that the world is still grounded in ways that make it recognizable to us, as human beings. Slather on too many fantastic elements, and a fantasy begins to crack under the strain.  

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter-- with all its crazy angles and gravity-defying battle sequences -- sacrifices realism for excessive but meaningless-style, and this approach simply doesn’t fit the gravity of the narrative. 

If this movie wants us to believe that Lincoln was a man who both freed the slaves and eradicated the vampires, then the filmmakers should have undertaken steps to make those acts seem believable and consistent with one another 

Instead, it doesn’t even try.  

 Like a lot of politicians and campaigns, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire just insults our intelligence on a near-constant basis.