Abraham's Boys is directed by Natasha Kermani, and the cast includes Titus Welliver, Jocelin Donahue, Aurora Perrineau, Judah Mackey, Brady Hepner.
My Thoughts on Abraham's Boys
I’ve always had a soft spot for vampire stories, and last years Nosferatu was incredible I thought.
Abraham’s Boys is a story about Van Helsing’s sons, years after the events of Dracula, which is a fresh way to explore that old legend from a new angle - an unsettling look at what happens when a man who’s spent his life fighting monsters tries to live like a normal human being.
The film picks up decades after Van Helsing’s famous battle with Dracula, and he’s now an older man living in the American countryside with his sons, Max and Rudy.
The days of chasing vampires through castles and crypts are long behind him, and instead, we get a man trying to bury his past under layers of silence and routine, but the problem is, you can only hide something like that for so long.
I actually thought that the premise was brilliant, and Titus Welliver, who plays Abraham, looks and sounds like a man who’s been at war with himself for decades, and there’s a weight to his presence that carries a lot of the movie, even when the writing doesn’t give him much to work with.
Now, I really don’t mind a slow burn in films, and some of my favorite horror films take their time, but this one feels stuck in second gear throughout, where the pacing drags to the point where even the quiet moments stop feeling suspenseful and just start feeling a bit too quiet.
There are long stretches of dialogue between Abraham and his sons that seem to go in circles, and the conversations feel heavy but not meaningful, as if the film is trying to build tension simply by being vague.
And the two sons, Max and Rudy, are meant to carry the emotional side of the story, but I found them frustratingly one-dimensional, and while the performances are fine, the writing also gives them little to do besides react.
It all does looks great though, I’ll give it that - the cinematography creates this cold, lonely mood that fits the story well, and I liked the way light is used in some scenes, but while the film’s atmosphere is strong enough, the story never rises to meet it.
At times we get flashes of something better underneath it all, as every now and then, you get a glimpse of what this movie could have been if it leaned a bit harder into its themes.
The horror elements are also surprisingly tame.
For a movie connected to Dracula, there’s almost no vampire presence at all, and you can tell the director was going for a more psychological approach, focusing on the damage left behind rather than the creatures themselves.
I actually like that idea, as it’s smart and different, but it doesn’t quite land because the film never builds enough energy to make the quieter moments resonate - you can’t have tension without movement, and Abraham’s Boys feels like it’s standing still most of the time.
And after all the slow build up, we get to the final act, which should have been the payoff - the moment where all that slow buildup finally makes sense - but it’s the weakest part of the film, and everything that’s been teased just kind of happens in a rush, as it’s shot and edited so quickly that it barely registers.
What's really frustrating though is how close this film actually does come to being something worthwhile, as the ingredients are all there, but it just never commits to any of it, and everything feels far too restrained and careful.
In the end, Abraham’s Boys left me mostly indifferent, which might be worse than actively disliking it -a quiet, well-shot film that never quite finds its pulse.
There’s a fascinating story waiting to be told in this idea, it just never takes that final step, and it’s a film that seems trapped between wanting to be horror and wanting to be drama, and in the end, it doesn’t fully succeed at being either.