Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
Abraham's Boys - Movie Review by Lisa Blanck
It's been eighteen years since the 'death' of Dracula. In that time, Dr. Van Helsing has moved his boys, Max and Rudy, to California's Central Valley. And, in Abraham's Boys, the new film directed by Natasha Kermani, it's readily apparent that the Count is still haunting the family Van Helsing. Still secretly craving his touch is Mina, their mother, who barely escaped with her life.
Yes, much of the lore of the legend of the most infamous blood sucker is within the film, which is written by Kermani and Joe Hill, but it's been completely neutered of any sexuality. The forbidden has been replaced by complete dour-ness.
By 1915, the Doctor (Titus Welliver) has created a stately home for himself and Mina (Jocelin Donahue) in a relatively undeveloped part of the state, and his reputation as a man of medicine is known among the locals.
However, instead of leaving their near-escape from a living hell of eternity behind, the Van Helsings have brought it with them. In fact, their past surrounds and touches everything, every day. And now, like rats on a ship, the Old World is encroaching on the new.
In attempting to expand on the legend, Hill has lost what made Dracula enticing. Hill is an accomplished writer of horror, who certainly learned his trade from his father, Stephan King. Together they've written novels and short stories. I've read many, if not most, and enjoyed the bulk of them. Unfortunately, Abraham's Boys never reaches the terror that one anticipates from such a specific, quasi-historical legend.
They've tried to instill some obvious lunacy: blood pudding for dinner, a series of mysterious disappearances, a locked door that the children are forbidden to open. A random bat, flying around the house. When a couple arrives breathlessly at the homestead in search of medical assistance, the good-ish doctor provides aid, and then, instead of payment, takes photographs of the injured man. Why? He's arrived with a punctured lung. Does Van Helsing believe the man was attacked by a vampire, and thus, will have no image? It's unexplained and unexplainable.
Son Max (Brady Hepner) has vivid dreams of his mother and Nosferatu. But why? It's just bizarre. He and his brother attempt to have some fun in the form of playing catch outside, but even then, their playtime clothing is formal and buttoned-up. And yes, it's bizarre. Everyone is the home is buttoned-up, physically as well as emotionally.
When the most exciting thing in a film are references to characters who no longer exist, like Jonathan Harker, MIna's former husband, meant to lash this film to its predecessors, you know the blood-ties are extremely thin. I can appreciate Hill trying to expand on a legend, but don't toss the iconography out with the seduction. Abraham's Boys fails to seduce the viewer.
