Inside ‘Abraham’s Boys,’ the Subversive Western ‘Dracula’ Sequel With Van Helsing Battling Evil in the Daylight

In “Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story,” writer-director Natasha Kermani made a small-scale family drama about a father raising his sons. It also happens to be a sequel to one of the most famous stories ever written.

The film — which releases in select theaters on July 11 from RLJE Films and Shudder — follows iconic “Dracula” foe Abraham Van Helsing (Titus Welliver) after he heads to the American West years after the events of that novel. While Van Helsing is a strict parent to his two sons, Max (Brady Hepner) and Rudy (Judah Mackey), they begin to wonder if he’s losing his mind as he warns that Dracula’s dark forces are resurfacing through his wife, Mina (Jocelin Donahue).

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Kermani says she was fascinated by the Joe Hill short story of the same name that her feature is based on.

“It’s this very simple story of a son and a father coming into collision with each other and their belief system,” she says. “To me, that felt very elegant and like it would lend itself very elegantly to a feature film. Then, of course, there’s the sandbox of Dracula. What filmmaker can resist that?”

One unique element is the film’s use of the sun. While there are some frightening scenes in darkness, much of the film is bathed in light, which is not only a change from many horror stories, but also is much different than “Dracula,” a tale drenched in darkness.

“In terms of cinematography, there is something so oppressive about that unending sun,” Kermani says. “It’s that classic American Western — there is no escaping this daylight. Obviously, for a vampire film, that gets subversive and interesting because we associate daylight with safety. When you start to play with that, maybe the daytime is not as safe as you think it is. Who are the monsters? What’s safe and what’s not? That was all very exciting for us to present visually. It has these huge expansive environments that are just oppressive. The sky is coming at you nonstop with sunlight.”

In order to make these bold choices, it was essential to have a strong actor be the backbone of the project. Welliver brings plenty of gravitas to Van Helsing in a different gear than audiences might be used to seeing him.

“In Joe’s story, his way in for Abraham is not as a monster hunter, not as this legendary swashbuckling character, but as a very grounded man who’s a father, a physician, a working man,” Kermani says. “Titus latched on to the sobriety of that culture, the control that these people hold. It has this fear, this anger, these simmering, sinister emotions right underneath the surface. For an actor, that’s very exciting, and that’s immediately what Titus latched on to and ran with throughout the film, and, of course, just losing that sobriety and becoming more and more unhinged as the movie continues.”

Ultimately, Kermani believes that the world of “Abraham’s Boys” would be ripe for even more chapters, as she would often discuss with Hill what the future could hold for the titular young men.

“This take on Dracula is all about the cycle of generational inheritance and the stories that we build around ourselves,” she says. “This movie is very much about Abraham’s world, the world he has built, for better or worse. We don’t get to see what Max or Rudy will go on to build for themselves. What is the story they create around themselves and their own experiences? Also, as America enters World War I, the kids go back to Europe. I think there are a lot of interesting things that you can do there, and it’s not a time period that we see a lot on screen, especially in a horror context. I think it’s very ripe for new stories.”

Watch the trailer for “Abraham’s Boys” below.