Last week I went to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which regards of what kind of film it was you can’t critise it for lacking orginially of title. Now, I thought and it seems the general consensus that the film wasn’t great, in fact most people I’ve spoken to said they found it ‘pants’ (that’s a direct quote.) Now I didn’t think it was truly awful but it certainly was great, and it definitely didn’t live up to the potential of its title.
Now I’m not totally slagging off AL, I quite liked the softly faded visuals, and in all seriousness it’s quite hard not to laugh when a horse is used as a weapon. I love horses, but that was a level of absurdity I hadn’t expected so I did giggle.
There are other movies like that, for example ‘Cowboys VS Aliens’ which really was terrible, and I’m just pleased that sadly though I saw it, at least I saw it for free. But combining genres have got me thinking, and while I don’t think they work as films, I wonder if this kind of slicing and dicing actually does ever work.
One movie that has achieved huge amounts of success, and a cult fan following is Shaun of The Dead. Famously nicknamed the rom-com-zom, thus blending three different types of movies. Did it work? Well I hate zombies, so after twenty minutes I turned this film off, so I can’t say, but most people seem to think it’s bloody marvelous. Maybe that’s the key to splicing – mix multiple genres. So if AL had added Zooey Deschanel with her kookiness as the first ever hippy, who knows the film might have been better. It certainly would have been funnier.
But all of this got me thinking what genres haven’t been tried yet? How about football fan ends up in Regency England, plus she has to seduce an English prince (just making a sport-costume-sex romp) – it doesn’t sound great TBH. But the weirder the better seems to be key to this. So how about Bollywood musical, crossed with an exorcism all set in a Woody Allen-inspired 1970s New York?
After all just think about how successful Baz Luhrmann was with Romeo + Juliet and it’s modern day setting, nothing has shaken the classic Shakespearean drama field like that movie, and that’s when bleeding different dramas shows not just a wacky and inventive imagination but an insightful mind. It’s just a shame the same can’t be said of Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Natalie Audley 