At this point we’re already knee-deep in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’s promotional campaign. We’ve posted the film’s first trailer, which highlighted Lincoln’s skill with an axe; its red band trailer, which put the spotlight on how crazy its action can get, and now the film’s third trailer is making the rounds; and it’s a promotional piece that finally hammers home the fact that this is a story about Abraham Lincoln.
It’s been strange up to this point how little this film’s advertising efforts have stressed the fact that it has a completely ludicrous premise, given that said premise is going to be the main attraction for fans of genre filmmaking. This is a movie about the 16th president of the United States slaughtering blood sucking monsters with kung-fu skills. That’s absurd! Why don’t we focus on that for a minute?
This third trailer does just that, lingering on images of the White House, playing over audio of one of Lincoln’s most famous speeches, and focusing on what a historical legend the bearded one is. This probably would have worked better as the film’s first trailer, and then the advertising efforts could have amped up the action over time, but what’s done is done.
Still though, it seems like this movie is tonally a bit more serious than it needs to be. In order to hit that target demographic of fans of schlocky B-cinema that you would think a movie about Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires should be going for, it might have been prudent to take a little more joy in the violence rather than presenting everything as being all dark and serious. While it’s still entirely possible that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will be full of action/horror goodness, at this point its box office potential is worrisome to me. What do you think?
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter opens on June 22nd.