Honest Abe – super slayer

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
DIRECTED BY: Timur Bekmambetov
STARRING: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Rufus Sewell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
CERT: 15

Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming Lincoln biopic, with Daniel Day Lewis in the lead role, will no doubt be a worthy and stirring glimpse into the life and times of America’s most celebrated president. You would expect nothing less.
In the meantime, director Timur Bekmambetov and his writer Seth Grahame-Smith (adapting his own novel) present the wild and excellent notion that Lincoln’s greatest struggle was not saving the union or freeing the slaves, but ridding his country of vampires.
And why not? Apparently the Southern states were riddled with them, which would give a whole new meaning to the ever-popular rallying cry, “The South will rise again!” It might even throw fresh light on the origin of the word “redneck”, certainly enough for further investigation.
In any case, like all great missions in life, Lincoln’s is personal. History recounts that his mother passed away in 1818 from a malady known as “milk sickness”.
But we all know you can’t trust history books and sure enough it turns out it was something more sinister that got old Mrs Lincoln in the end.
So, after hooking up with surly vampire hunter Henry Sturgess (Cooper) and honing his skills with an axe, the future emancipator declares bloody war on the undead and their ancient leader Adam (Sewell). He goes on to become president, too, which is probably a bit of an anti-climax after saving the nation from the hounds of hell.
Which is every bit as silly as it sounds, but great fun all the same, all the more so because all concerned are playing it straight, with not a single humorously raised eyebrow or ironic sneer in sight.
The only bum notes are the visual gimmicks – the overdone CGI in the vampire battle sceenes and the useless 3D, an option you can skip without missing a thing.
A sequel might normally be on the cards in this scenario, but that looks doubtful since the film closes with Lincoln heading out for a nice night at the theatre.
History tells us that was a bad move. But then, history has been wrong before.

The Chernobyl Diaries
DIRECTED BY: Brad Parker
STARRING: Dimitri Diatchenko, Jesse McCartney, Jonathon Sadowski, Devin Kelley, Olivia Dudley
CERT: 16
In their build-up to last Sunday’s Euro 2012 quarter-final between England and Italy, ESPN made the rather bizarre decision to run a feature on the city of Pripyat in the Ukraine, the infamous ghost town that was once home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
It was quite an emotional piece and it closed with a tearful interview with the widow of a former reactor employee, who died years after the accident from exposure to radiation.
From there, ESPN cut back to the sports studio, where their plastic ‘Bill O’Herlihy’ glibly announced that Pripyat is now a tourist hot spot and for just 200 American dollars, you can take a tour of the abandoned city! It doesn’t get any classier than that.
The same Pripyat is the location for The Chernobyl Diaries, a half-decent chiller about a bunch of young Western travelers who decide to take in a bit of extreme tourism. I’m not sure if the tour they take is the same one ESPN was flogging, but if it is, it’s a few hundred quid well spent, considering  the unexpected extras.
Heading for Moscow, Amanda (Kelley), Chris (McCartney) and his lady friend Natalie (Dudley) make a stop in Kiev to visit Chris’s brother Paul (Sadowski).
Paul is the kind of mad fella who always ends up getting you in the best trouble and, sure enough, he convinces the gang to take in a spot of off-the-map sightseeing.
So they pay up their dollars and pile into a battered old van with their tour guide, a former special-ops agent called Uri (Diatchenko). Then it’s off to Pripyat, where you know right well nothing good is waiting in the dark.
It all works well for a while, too. It’s a fine idea, a good setup and there’s a nice few hearty scares. Like most horror movies, though, it runs out of steam too soon and eventually the cardboard characters and their increasingly dumb behaviour do very bad things to your nerves.
It doesn’t help that the only really likeable person in the movie takes an early bath, if you don’t mind me mixing horror with sports commentary clichés.
I’ve been watching too much ESPN.

The Five Year Engagement
DIRECTED BY: Nicholas Stoller
STARRING: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Alison Brie
CERT: 15A
Jason Segel is Tom, a successful chef who proposes to the lovely Violet (Blunt) on their one-year anniversary. But, as you might guess from the title, stuff keeps getting in the way of the knot being finally tied. Like Violet moving from San Francisco to Michigan to take a psychology position and Tom giving up everything to follow her, only to end up miserable.
Co-written by Segel and director Nicholas Stoller, the film kicks off well but sinks badly in the middle and drags on way too long before finally picking up again in the closing stages, too late to save the day.
Segel and Blunt are a likeable pair, but two hours in their company with this script feels like an eternity. For a romantic comedy, however, The Five Year Engagement isn’t half funny enough.