Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is unlikely to be remembered as one of the great films, but it has its moments and its points. The ultimate lesson about the undead we content with in the era post Citizens United, intended or not, is worth remembering.
The film re imagines the life of Abraham Lincoln by engrafting a shadowy second career of vampire hunting on American history. This produces a film which prances across the unsteady landscape of well grounded, researched and presented history and pure fantasy. It assures a budget which can render 19th century Washington, railroads and New Orleans with detail and life that is wondrous to see. Many of the historic characters are depicted with great detail. Large segments of the Emancipation Proclamation are set out in the film. The full Gettysburg address appears to be there. This may be on of the best Mary Todd Lincolns to ever appear in cinema, reflecting her recent more sympathetic historic reevaluation based on court records. There is a valid measure of the great currents of history here which fans of Frank Capra and John Ford would recognize.
There are also oversexed vampires hiding in plain sight in the storefronts of pharmacists and bankers. They have to be killed in bizarre and brutal ways. As a fairly serious historian, I feel guilty about enjoying it. This history channel can’t do it this big and well. However, when the blood starts flying, it doesn’t always work. Abe is pretty quick with that silver ax. There are some narrative shortcuts in the evolution of his views on slavery. Regiments of Confederate undead overrunning Federal positions on the first day of Gettysburg pushes the suspension of disbelief pretty hard. We were, thank goodness, spared a vampire Robert E. Lee.
The movie makes the blood sucking practices of the Vampires, many of which are slave owners, a metaphor for human exploitation. This is handled with greater complexity and subtlety than most American cinema. The practice of slavery is placed in a larger historic and moral context, which makes it both more normal and more wrong. Slavery, exploitation and feeding off the life of the vulnerable is a constant historic theme.
Fighting it runs against the grain. It is a sickness which runs in our blood, from the lash heard as the stones of the pyramids were stacked to the rustle of pink slips issuing from Bain Capital as a town dies. In our haunted factory towns of rust and empty storefronts, a lot of blood has been sucked out of the Republic.
As Citizens United and the revelations about how America was intentionally reindustrialized over the past generation make clear, the American middle class has been sucked dry by vampires as loathsome as those feeding on their slaves in the sick moonlight of this film’s nightmare plantation.
Like the undead of the film, these corporate vampires aren’t human. They also live forever. They’re utterly dependent on the life and labor they feed on. They fold themselves into the ordinary life of our communities and economy. They spread their disease by attacking the productive components of our society. They attack the living planet. They weaken their human prey through fear and social division. The corrupt our Government. They’re terrified of daylight. Since Citizens United, they’ve become bolder and more aggressive. They do want to take over our country.
We’re going to need a lot of silver axes to stop them.
At the end of the film, there is a transition to the present day. Someone is watching Marine One land on the Whitehouse Lawn on a smart phone. Lincoln’s vampire hunting partner has survived. The scene is politically ambiguous. Like the entire film, it’s on the verge of a fairly pointed commentary on our time, but I couldn’t quite tell what the last scene indicated. Perhaps you’ll do better.
However maybe you need to go hunting a silver ax instead.