The domestic and the international trailers for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter debuted a few days ago to decidedly mixed reactions.  There’s the “Tim Burton has finally lost his mind” camp.  The “eh, it could be mindless fun” camp.  And of course: “the book was great but this looks dumb” camp.  I read the book last year and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel, despite its outlandish concept is a very entertaining read that has a surprising emotional and thematic resonance.  Even though I’m cautiously optimistic about Timur Bekmambetov’s (Wanted) adaption, I have to admit, seeing the 16th president of the United States deploying some antebellum era matrix moves on the undead does raise some concerns.  In the book, vampire hunting is portrayed as a gritty, messy, and ultimately soul-destroying endeavor.  The fancy wire-work, axe-fu, and slow motion action sequences on display here smack of Hollywood gloss.  Regardless, this is going to be a very hard movie to sell to general audiences; Fox’s marketing department has their work cut out for them.  The domestic trailer was all bombastic action mixed with Johnny Cash narration.  The international trailer is a slight improvement in my opinion, showing us brief glimpses of more emotional character beats in-between all the vampire hunting insanity.  Did you enjoy the international trailer more than the domestic trailer?  Will you be going to check out Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter when it arrives in theaters in June?

Here’s the international trailer.

Here’s the official trailer.