Unfortunately for our 16^th president, it seems Edward Everett rose from the dead to pen the meandering script of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Yet judged by its base-heavy, slow-motion, blood-splattered trailer, Tim Burton’s newest movie looked just as epic as its title.

Stretch that minute and a half into an hour and a half, however, and the movie commits an error that Lincoln never would have. The president gave his Gettysburg Address in just two minutes, and director Timur Bekmambetov could take a lesson from him in brevity.

For what it delivers, Vampire Hunter is simply too long. Bekmambetov takes105 minutes to drag through a story that slashes historical accuracy as often as it does dead corpses—although neither of those two actions are unwelcome. If you expected Bekmambetov to stick to the historical record, I would refer you back to the movie’s title. And if you were looking for something other than silver-tipped shotgun/axe hybrids and fountains of scarlet blood, I would suggest someone other than Burton. But for the most part, that’s not what Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter presents.

Instead of an action-packed awesomefest of vampire slaying, the film takes us on Lincoln’s untold monomyth and bizarre coming-of-age story. Played by Benjamin Walker of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a strapping young Abe witnesses the horrors of American vampires from his first years growing up in the log cabin.

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