ABRAHAM'S BOYS - Mark Reviews Movies

Abraham's Boys, RLJE Films / Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 10, 2025

Of all the characters in Bram Stoker's immortal novel Dracula, none—apart from the eponymous vampire, obviously—is more fascinating than Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. He's a man of hard science and a believer in the metaphysical—as much a devotee of myth as he is to medicine. That makes him and his beliefs filled with contradictions, but as long as his foe is an actual supernatural entity feeding upon the blood of the living and transforming them into the undead, the man is correct in both of his conflicting philosophies.

Abraham's Boys, an adaptation of a short story by Joe Hill, puts forth a provocative idea in its approach to Stoker's second-most famous literary creation. In writer/director Natasha Kermani's movie, Van Helsing and his family have moved from Europe to sunny California, hoping to isolate themselves from the world and whatever evils might still be stalking in the night.

Since it's the early parts of the next century, though, the world comes toward them, in the form of a burgeoning railroad system, and the doctor is convinced that means evil will come with that progress—if it's not already here. An opening scene of a traveling woman (played by Fayna Sanchez) being nabbed by a cloaked figure certainly makes it appear that some kind of evil is in the area.

There's something of a twist to this setup that's impossible to avoid, because the central character and the story depend on the question it raises. It's a simple one that any skeptic might wonder about while reading or watching any kind of supernatural tale: If Van Helsing was wrong about the existence of vampires, what kind of person does that make him?

In the movie, Van Helsing is played by Titus Welliver, who forgoes any of the eccentric trappings in which other performances of the character have indulged. His doctor is almost a boring man, really, living in isolation with his wife and two sons on a plot of land far from any city or town. He spends his days in study, leaving the housework and chores to the rest of his clan, and in offering advice, usually about work and faith and keeping to oneself, to his sons Max (Brady Hepner) and Rudy (Judah Mackey). The choice to make the plain, unassuming, and mostly dull might seem counterintuitive, but once the movie puts forth its central question, the juxtaposition of his personality and his behavior is more unsettling than if Van Helsing were portrayed in a bolder way.

The boys' mother, by the way, is Mina (Jocelin Donahue), the woman Van Helsing helped rescue from the clutches of Count Dracula about 20 years prior. Some knowledge of Stoker's story—in almost any form, really—is a necessity to understand the particulars of this tale, but since it is one of the most famous in the history of literature, that's not exactly a barrier to entry. As for Mina's former husband, he died at some point after the confrontation with Dracula, and one wonders if people should question how quickly he has been forgotten and Van Helsing filled his role as Mina's husband.

Kermani might have felt a bit hesitant to really dig into the connections between this story and Stoker's, simply because such an approach would require more of an audience than a passing knowledge or basic memory of the original tale. The result, though, is a movie that takes a single idea, as potentially and subversively frightening as it may be, and circles around it with some general eeriness, some thin psychology, and a lot of repetition.

The basic plot has Mina become convinced that some vampiric foe has arrived near her family's new home, and Van Helsing takes it upon himself to restart the treatments—putting her in quarantine, giving her blood transfusions, performing protective rituals—he gave Mina all those years ago. The sons have heard their parents' stories of the pair's encounters with Dracula and subsequent battles with other vampires, but after discovering something in a hidden room in their father's office, Max and Rudy have to confront of the reality of Van Helsing's beliefs, while also doubting that those ideas about the supernatural are actually real.

The primary issue is that, as soon as the seed of doubt has been planted in this story, it has nowhere to go except an inevitable realization about this man and his deeds. Watching Max wrestle with the possibilities that either vampires do exist or his father might be deluded or a liar doesn't make for much drama, especially since Kermani's approach is so grounded that the storytelling and filmmaking essentially provide the answer by their very nature.

To be clear, this is a very fine and clever conceit for the character of Van Helsing specifically and the lore of Stoker's novel more generally. However, Abraham's Boys seems content in the novelty of its premise and does little to expand upon or explore it in any meaningful or insightful way.

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