
Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story is directed by Natasha Kermani director of Shattered (2017), Imitation Girl (2017) and Lucky (2020).
Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story has such an interesting setup and really great ideas that I’m sure any fan of vampires could get behind. A story tells the later years of Abraham Van Helsing himself and his two sons where he moves to the U.S. to escape his past. An intriguing idea that has the misfortune of being surrounded by a very dull and boring (I hate using that word in my reviews but there is genuinely no other way to describe it) movie that completely fumbles the ball with its execution.
The performances are at the very least decent, Titus Welliver gives an intimidating performance as Van Helsing and is by far one of the films better parts. His performance alone is able to give the scene some sense of solid thrilling atmosphere, Brady Hepner and Judah Mackey are also not bad here as well. They aren’t as strong as Welliver mainly due to the very basic script, but they make the most of what they have and leave a somewhat solid impression. Unfortunately there’s just not a whole lot going on with their characters.
The cinematography is quite well done, with this old-school visual style that does at least for a brief moment bring you into the movie’s world. The score is also quite chilling at times, there’s tons of quiet moments that help the score sink into the viewer as each scene plays out, when it comes to technical aspects the movie is a success. The atmosphere is there, the cinematography is genuinely beautiful in this haunting type of way and the score is chilling.
The movie struggles when it comes to the script, unfortunately the movie quickly abandons its neat ideas and instead trades them in for a collection of scenes where very little is going on. This isn’t a slow burn horror film where the setup and wait might payoff, this is the type of slow burn horror movie where you can really feel it drag out. Which is a bit of shame because there are moments in between that are genuinely effective. There’s one particular moment that resulted in the same sort of atmosphere as Night Of The Living Dead (1968) where you are wondering what’s going on in the outside world of the movie. Those moments are almost immediately followed up with scenes where very little happens or is learned (mainly due to there not being any mystery since we already know who Abraham is.)
If you are going into this movie expecting to see vampires you are going to be very disappointed, because weirdly enough there’s a huge lack of them. Instead it plays as this picture of a family trying to deal with their traumatic pasts. Which makes sense in the context of the movie but it’s not done in an investing way for the viewer to care for these characters. How they took such an interesting premise that includes Van Helsing and made it completely dull and even quite forgettable is the real mystery.
Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story releases in theaters Friday.
4/10 D+








