Not since Snakes on a Plane has a title of a film done such an effective job letting the audience know what they are in for. And really, your reaction to the title Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a great indication of how you will feel about this film.

If the title causes you to roll your eyes, then you are best to avoid this one at all costs.

But if you are excited by the prospect of seeing one of America’s greatest Presidents use an ax to mow down an army of soulless bloodsuckers, then you will not be disappointed.

The film isn’t as campy or as over-the-top as you might expect. While the premise is utterly absurd, the movie still treats the idea seriously and delivers a rather straightforward – though highly-stylized – action film. There are a few passing tongue-in-cheek moments here and there and certainly a lot of winking references to real events, but it goes for action and drama over laughs.

It gets a lot of mileage out of slow motion action sequences, which is frankly a nice change of pace from the shaky camera, quick cut style that has become all too commonplace these days. Director Timur Bekmambetov has a solid sense of where to position the camera and when to slow things down for maximum impact. And he and his fight choreographers have come up with some great large-scale action sequences.

Benjamin Walker does a good job both with the fight scenes and the role of Lincoln itself. Reportedly, Walker did the bulk of the twirling and swinging ax work himself and he’s quite convincing at it. He also does a good job creating a version of Lincoln that seems like an actual person and not some caricature of a man we are all familiar with from our history books and President’s Day sales commercials.

Many of the important moments in Lincoln’s life are retconned to tie into his secret never-ending war with vampires. In this version of events, Abraham Lincoln’s mother is killed by a vampire when he is a child, which convinces him to devote his life to fighting the undead (sort of like a colonial Batman). He is trained by Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), a fellow slayer.

In his poem “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot famously wrote, “This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.”

When it comes to apocalyptic films, Hollywood loves to give us the bang. The end usually comes from aliens destroying all our landmarks or nuclear bombs wreaking havoc on major cities. But Seeking a Friend for the End of the World gives us the whimper – the populace attempting to carrying on with their daily lives despite knowing that the end is inevitably happening in less than a month.

In this film, it’s an asteroid that’s on a collision course with Earth, much like in Armageddon. But instead of witnessing the heroic acts Bruce Willis and his team take to save mankind, the film opens with a radio announcer sullenly informing those listening that our last ditch effort to stop the asteroid has failed before he kicks it over to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys.

We never actually see the asteroid. Instead of an action thriller or a drama, the film is a dark comedy looking at how people react knowing that the end is inevitable. Some, like Patton Oswalt’s character, see the end as a chance to finally have as much meaningless sex as possible. Others, like Warren (Rob Corddry) plan to spend it their final days in a drunken stupor. But our hero Dodge (Steve Carell) is simply going about his normal life – reporting to work every day at a big insurance firm (which is now all but abandoned) just waiting for the clock to eventually expire.

That is until his wife leaves him, causing him to finally reevaluate everything. With the help of his free spirited neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley), he decides to set out in search of “the one that got away” – a high school sweetheart who wrote him a letter three months back looking to reconnect.

What unfolds is a funny, moving and rather captivating road movie about these two unlikely companions spending their last days together. The uptight guy/free spirited girl combination is one often seen in Hollywood, but the characters are so rich and the story so unique that it feels fresh and interesting. Plus there are enough turns in the story to keep things from ever feeling overly too predictable.