Abraham's Boys

Abraham Van Helsing (Titus Welliver) tries to keep his family safe in Abraham's Boys (Distributed by IFC Films and RLJE Films)

The character of Abraham Van Helsing is best known as the vampire hunter who was instrumental in taking down Dracula. He is generally seen as an old doctor who relied on his wits, knowledge and determination to defeat his foe (or as a badass action-hero played by Hugh Jackman). Despite filmmakers having a fondness for Dracula, Van Helsing is presented as the good guy. In the horror-tinged drama Abraham’s Boys, he’s older, but fit, and filled with anger. He considers himself a servant of God, killing disease-ridden people before they can turn into vampires. Is he fighting the good fight? Or has he lost his mind? Titus Welliver is fittingly intense as a man at odds with a world that seems scared of him, though it is a one-note performance in a one-note movie.

There is a whole lot of slow-burn here and very little in the way of action (either physical or emotional). Welliver glares and makes declarations while the other characters begin to wonder if he is crazy. That is pretty much it. Based on the 2009 short story by Joe Hill, it feels like half of a story that ends just when the narrative begins to head in an interesting direction. It isn’t actively bad, yet there is absolutely nothing compelling about it. The story of an aging vampire hunter who is an emotionally abusive father, teaching his unwilling sons the family business, should not be this boring.

It is 1915 and Abraham Van Helsing has fled to California with his wife, Mina, and two sons, teenage Max and younger Rudy. When Mina starts to get very sick, Abraham decides it is time to show his boys how to fight evil, before it is too late.

Max (Brady Hepner) chops wood

Abraham’s Boys (86 minutes, without the end credits) is a character study about a character it never lets us study. We see that Van Helsing is cruel and refuses to listen to anyone when it comes to his wife’s care and his boys’ safety. We also see how obsessed he is with his “calling.” What the audience is not privy to is how he feels about anything. Mina only exists to suffer. That leaves the boys, who are scared, mad and suspicious, in that order. There is so little depth to any of these people. That is just magnified by the lack of plot, suspense and mood. There are a few nice shots of the countryside, showing the family’s isolation. Otherwise, there is no personality to this. It is drab, dull and comes off way longer than it actually is.

At a lot of points, Abraham’s Boys almost plays more like the pilot for a television series than it does a standalone feature. It doesn’t feel like a self-contained story and then the “reveal” at the end feels a lot more like an introduction to the next chapter in the boys’ lives than it does any kind of a payoff. The source material is a short story and this probably would have been better as a short film. Even at less than 90 minutes, it is two times longer than the plot required. There is little setup, the characters are underdeveloped and the ending has no impact. This may be the most forgettable movie of the year.

2 out of 5

Cast:

Titus Welliver as Abraham Van Helsing

Brady Hepner as Max Van Helsing

Judah Mackey as Rudy Van Helsing

Jocelin Donahue as Mina Van Helsing

Written/Directed by Natasha Kermani