The sons of Abraham Van Helsing try to reconcile their father’s history with his current abusive actions in Natasha Kermani’s horror-drama, Abraham’s Boys, based on Joe Hill’s short story Dracula sequel.
There has been a glut of new Dracula-based material as of late. Abigail, a few versions of Nosferatu, Renfield, Last Voyage of the Demeter, and others have all used the well-trod vampire tale in many ways. But they all deal with the Count and his family or relations. What about his victims? How do they try to continue after the showdown? Can they just get on living their lives, or are they affected to the point of never really being out of the shadow of battle? Those are some of the questions posed by Abraham’s Boys, based on the short story of the same name from Joe Hill’s collection 20th Century Ghosts, and adapted and directed by Natasha Kermani, who previously made Lucky and Imitation Girl.
Unfortunately, the questions are more interesting than the answers. Abraham’s Boys picks up in 1915, on the sun-drenched, wide-open central valley of California, far from the gloomy, dark Whidbey, England, or the enclosed, craggy Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. In the 18 years since defeating Dracula, Van Helsing has married Mina Harker, and the pair have a set of sons (thus the title), 15 and 12 years old, or thereabouts. Both Mina and Abraham are still affected by their past. She’s sickly from her semi-transformation. He’s paranoid and abusive, mostly emotionally, believing the vampires are still out and stalking his family. His kids put up with it.
And that’s pretty much it. Abraham’s Boys is a slog, even at only 89 minutes. There’s so little drive as the film slowly takes its steps. Repetition upon repetition as Mina is sick and acts strangely. Van Helsing is terrible to his kids. The kids argue over their dad’s actions, before and after he talks to his past, and voice their concern for the dying Mina. Poor Mina, she’s merely a prop. Too bad, as her actress, Jocelin Donahue of House of the Devil and Doctor Sleep, is by far the best performance, giving Mina a ghostly, ethereal otherness. Titus Weilliver as Van Helsing is so subdued, I wondered if he was asleep between takes; far different from his normal menacing energy. The boys, Brady Hepner and Judah Mackey, are fine.
The film does pick up a little, but just a little, when Van Helsing reveals the hows and whys of his past. Here, it plays into the “what’s the reality?” “Is there a vampire around, or is dad crazy?” and “either way, do we fight him or go with it?” and how the boys each think, and a slight rift between them from it. But mostly, the vampire aspect is just a small layer to a regular son vs dad abuse story. I couldn’t help but think it comes off like a much lighter version of Fraility. Frailty, if you’ve not seen it, follows Bill Paxton (also directing), who trains his sons to kill those he sees as demons. That one does something with the idea, both in character and action; a looming sense of unease and driven characters. So little happens in Abraham’s Boys; it’s frustrating. The audience knows more than the characters, and we’re waiting for it to get there, to use the concept, but it never becomes more than a vague maybe-menace.
It’s a shame. While I was meh on Imitation Girl, I loved Kermani’s Lucky. It spoke to abuse and gaslighting, dealing with those not believing, and the world of those in danger, and did so in a twisty, fresh way. To have Abraham’s Boys just be so… blah (blah blah… I’ll see myself out) saddens me. It’s not even visually interesting like Imitation Girl and Lucky, to give something good to look at outside of a few moments here and there.
One can wonder how much of the impetus of the story comes from Hill’s youth. He is the son of Stephen King, another horror icon like Van Helsing (but real, of course), and both he and King have been open about the issues King had when Joe was growing up. But that starts to slide into conjecture. But it’s good to say Hill is no nepo baby; his work has been fantastic. He has far less output than Dad, but he has a steady quality. King’s highs are higher and lows are lower, but Hill is legit as a continued presence in the horror literary canon. If you’ve not read any Hill, go check out “20th Century Ghosts” at least, as short stories are a great way into an author, and these stories are bangers. You’ll recognize “Black Phone,” which became one of my favorites of 2021 (and I can’t wait for the sequel this fall).
Read 20th Century Ghosts (other standout stories: the strange “Pop Art” and the terrifying and bizarre “My Father’s Mask”). Put a stake in Abraham’s Boys. Not doing much but wasting a nice premise, it’s usually a dull whiff of an abuse story with a supernatural overlay.