Who better than Timur Bekmambetov, a true tastemaker of the tasteless variety (Night Watch, Day Watch, Wanted), to direct a blood-soaked slicefest featuring the Great Emancipator hacking apart fangbearers with a silver ax? Based on the of-course-it-was-popular 2010 book by Seth Grahame-Smith (next up on-screen: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter delivers precisely what it promises. If it offends you and your understanding of the man on the five-dollar bill, you probably take life, history and yourself too seriously. 

Grahame-Smith's premise, which he tweaked into a screenplay from his source text, has Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) starting just as he did in the non-Nosferatu-infested real world, as an Illinois rail splitter of humble means. After mysterious and foppish man of leisure Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper) saves his life from a bloodsucker, Honest Abe insists he be trained in the fine art of creature combat, so as to get his vengeance on the vamp (Marton Csokas) responsible for murdering his mother. He relocates to the sprawling metropolis of Springfield and takes up a job in a general store, moonlighting in the moonlight in accordance with Henry's wishes while wooing the inquisitive Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

Bekmambetov's signature slo-mo action sequences play right into this concept, and the all-American Walker wears the stove-pipe hat as well as any actor tossed into such gleefully preposterous circumstances. Lincoln's lasting influence as far as winning the Civil War and ending slavery is handled cartoonishly, which is probably a good thing — those flummoxed by the sheer existence of this shameless-but-satisfying bit of pop-history revisionism would probably scream even louder if those aspects were presented with anything but a smirk.

(@drewlazor)