In the ever-growing realm of reimagined vampire lore, Natasha Kermani’s Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story dares to tread familiar territory with a contemplative, almost meditative gaze. Based on Joe Hill’s eerie short story Abraham’s Boys, which itself peels back the psychological remnants of Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula, Kermani’s adaptation is less a monster tale and more a quiet, gothic psychodrama. Her film strives to reframe the traditional vampire mythos into a chilling domestic story — one of family legacies, emotional repression, and the blurred line between protection and tyranny. Yet while the film reaches for thoughtful reinterpretation, it occasionally falters beneath the weight of its own subdued ambition.
From the moment the film opens, Kermani makes it clear she’s not hiding her literary cards. There’s no mystery to who “Abraham” is — he’s Abraham Van Helsing, the famed vampire hunter, now living a low-profile life in America with his two sons. Joe Hill’s original story names the elder boy Max Van Helsing outright, and Kermani follows suit. However, where Hill’s tale begins with absence — notably, the absence of Mina, the boys’ mother — Kermani diverges by giving Mina not just a presence but a voice. It’s one of the more notable creative deviations, and while intriguing in theory, this alteration never fully evolves into something meaningful or revelatory.
Set against a bleak suburban backdrop, Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story unfolds through the uneasy eyes of Max (Brady Hepner), a teenager whose life is increasingly shadowed by confusion, suspicion, and a growing skepticism about his father’s murky past. His younger brother, Rudy (Judah Mackey), still clings to innocence, echoing belief in their father’s cryptic teachings about monsters lurking in the world. Titus Welliver plays Abraham with a kind of buttoned-up dread, a figure who seems less a mythic hunter and more a ghost in his own home — controlling, secretive, and increasingly unhinged.
Where Hill’s story lets the absence of Mina linger like a ghostly echo — a mother lost to trauma, spoken of only in hushed tones — Kermani instead resurrects her. Played by Jocelin Donahue, Mina is a spectral figure of a different sort: she’s there in the flesh, haunted by visions and whispering memories of London’s dark past. She’s survived something unspeakable, though the film only brushes against the emotional enormity of that survival. Rather than pushing this pivot to its dramatic limits, Mina becomes emblematic of the film’s greater problem — a potentially rich idea, underexplored and ultimately underwhelming.
Still, credit where it’s due: Kermani makes the dynamics between her characters immediately accessible. The audience understands, quickly and clearly, what each figure wants and fears. Mina, for all her fragility, is not passive. Her unease with Abraham is palpable — at one point, she openly reflects on her desire for a daughter, one she imagines might have been “softer,” yet harder to protect. It’s a piercing line, suggesting that Max and Rudy’s forced toughness is a symptom of their father’s influence, a coping mechanism in a home where fear masquerades as discipline.
Yet despite these moments of promise, the film struggles to maintain dramatic momentum. Visually, Abraham’s Boys is striking in places — all greys, silences, and distant thunder — but narratively it often drifts, unwilling to embrace either psychological depth or gothic spectacle. The tension between father and sons simmers, but rarely boils. The conflict at the heart of the film — whether Abraham’s paranoia is justified or simply madness dressed up in folklore — never fully lands with the complexity it aims for.
This isn’t to say the film is without merit. Its greatest strength lies in its refusal to spoon-feed horror. Kermani wants to unsettle, not scare. Her Abraham doesn’t rant about vampires; he speaks of “the family business” in hushed tones, passing on rituals like sacred burdens. This choice evokes comparisons to Frailty, Bill Paxton’s chilling 2001 film about a father who believes he’s divinely chosen to destroy demons, dragging his sons along on a holy crusade. That film crackled with tension and ambiguity; Kermani’s version, by contrast, often flattens its ideas through over-explained dialogue and missed opportunities.
Take, for instance, a scene where Mina recalls being saved by Abraham. “He moved like a ghost…the others never saw him. I did. I remember. Your father saved me.” It’s a line meant to evoke mystery and admiration, but it plays like a placeholder — something that hints at depth without diving into it. The film is peppered with such lines, heavy with potential but delivered with such restraint that they fail to leave an impact.
Even the film’s central revelation — the boys finally understanding who and what their father is — arrives with a whimper rather than a scream. There’s a moment lifted directly from Hill’s story, where Abraham attempts to initiate his sons into the terrifying truth. In Hill’s telling, this is a gut-punch, a horrifying rite of passage. In Kermani’s hands, it feels staged, like a play where everyone knows their lines but no one believes them.
Compounding this is the lack of chemistry between Welliver’s Abraham and Donahue’s Mina. Their relationship is supposed to be the emotional bedrock of the story, a tragic love shaped by survival and secrecy. But their interactions lack spark, making even pivotal exchanges like “I’ll never leave you,” and “I don’t believe you,” land with a dull thud. When Abraham later offers a chilling non-apology after hitting one of his sons — “I suppose I have never raised my hand to you before. Mother has made me gentle.” — the moment should reverberate with menace. Instead, it merely passes by.
New characters added for the film don’t help much either. Elsie (Aurora Perrineau), a neighbor or possibly a family friend (the film never quite clarifies), flits in and out of the narrative like a ghostly subplot. Her purpose remains vague, her connection to the Van Helsings tenuous. She could have been a grounding figure for Max, or even a narrative foil — but instead, she’s an afterthought, a narrative loose end.
Even Abraham himself, supposedly the dark center of this tale, is never fully realized. There are hints — in Welliver’s performance, in the silent stares, the sudden outbursts — that suggest a man consumed by a burden far larger than himself. But Kermani never fully unpacks his psyche. The idea that Abraham is repeating the sins of his own father emerges late in the film, in a compelling moment that hints at generational trauma. Yet this moment, like so many others, arrives too late and ends too soon.
A particularly frustrating addition is a final act twist, in which someone from Abraham’s past confronts him with a loaded question: “What if we made a mistake?” The question hangs heavy in the air, pregnant with implications. But the film treats it like punctuation instead of revelation — a dramatic device rather than a meaningful turn. It could have opened up fascinating new layers of doubt and accountability, but instead it’s left to wither.
That’s not to say Kermani’s direction lacks skill. Her atmosphere is deliberate, her use of sound and silence effective. There’s beauty in the film’s quiet moments — the wind rustling through leaves, the crunch of gravel underfoot, the cold weight of generational expectation. These sensory elements linger, giving the film an almost poetic stillness. But stillness is not substance. In stretching a short story into a full-length feature, Abraham’s Boys feels both thin and overwrought — a whisper extended into a monologue.
Ultimately, Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story is a film full of admirable intent and missed execution. It expands on Hill’s lean, ambiguous story by adding new perspectives, especially from Mina, but rarely does it deepen those additions into something essential. It introduces mystery, but often unravels it too quickly or too neatly. And it seeks to humanize a legend, only to leave him curiously hollow.
What remains is a film that gestures toward meaning — about fathers and sons, about the weight of belief, about survival and legacy — but rarely embraces the raw, emotional power needed to make those themes resonate. It’s not a bad film. In fact, it’s often a smart, careful one. But in the world of gothic horror, where shadows are supposed to loom large and silence is meant to scream, Abraham’s Boys feels too timid, too polite. The story deserved teeth. What we get instead is a thoughtful, but ultimately toothless whisper in the dark.
