Have you ever wandered the post-apocalyptic wasteland with a nuclear bomb in your pocket? I sure have. And although it may not seem like the “Fallout” games have much to do with writer/director Natasha Kermani’s “Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story” — adapted from the horror tale by Joe Hill (“The Black Phone”) — the film evokes a feeling that’s familiar to many gamers. It’s the one where you hang onto your best weapon the whole time, waiting for the right moment to use it, only to reach the end and realize it’s too late. You wasted every chance.
“Abraham’s Boys” has many secret weapons. The film’s stars, Titus Welliver (“Bosch”) and Jocelin Donahue (“The Last Stop in Yuma County”) are two of the best in the game. They play Abraham and Mina Van Helsing, characters from the pages of “Dracula” who married after the death of Mina’s husband. Now they live on the edge of the frontier in an isolated house in California, raising their two sons and hiding from civilization — which encroaches ever westward and threatens to bring vampires with it, like supernatural vermin.
Welliver seems so reserved in “Abraham’s Boys” that you start to wonder if he has lockjaw. But he’s playing a man who keeps his secrets close to the vest, so we wait. We know they cast Titus Welliver, so we know he’ll do something eventually. At least, we hope so. Meanwhile, Donahue gives a ghostly, ethereal performance, clad in full, morbid black dresses even in the punishing California heat, pale and pointed and living in terror of Dracula’s return. If you know her work in “House of the Devil” and “Doctor Sleep,” you know how brilliant she is. So surely the movie won’t let her amble aimlessly forever. So again, we wait. And wait. And wait.
And hey, this seems like a lot of waiting…
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I’m sad to report that the film’s other unused secret weapon is its own plot. “Abraham’s Boys” is just 89 minutes long and it still takes forever to get anywhere. Abraham and Mina aren’t the protagonists, their sons are. The muscular, dim Max (Brady Hepner, “The Holdovers”) and his wiry, curious brother Rudy (Judah Mackey) spend their days toiling, doing their home-schooled homework and preparing for an inevitable battle with the undead.
But “preparing” is overselling it. It’s more like they futz around. “Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Tale” keeps hinting at horror to come, but only sporadically, as though the film got so carried away with living outside of civilization that it’s forgotten how to actually live. Which may be thematically on point, but it’s a dull way to tell a story. The first half of Kermani’s film is a bore, frankly, since the audience is way ahead of the characters, and the characters have very little drive. There’s no sense of impending doom. Even the vague menace is annoyingly vague (which is not the best kind of vague).
Things pick up in the second half, as finally we realize this story has a different take on the classic Dracula lore, revealing there’s more — or less — to the mythology than we thought we knew. But by that point, it’s too late. Drowsiness has already moved in, signed the lease and painted the walls the way it likes them: beige. We’re living in drowsiness’ house now. Even if you pull the rug out from under us, it’s still the same living room — and it’s drab and lifeless.
There’s a great idea in “Abraham’s Boys.” The film just doesn’t start exploring it until it’s too late. It’s more like two movies: the first is an unconvincing misdirect, the second has no time to shine. There’s very little suspense and the most accomplished actors in the cast keep most of their talent to themselves. Welliver and Donahue are explosive performers; someone should have lit their fuse.
This movie is based on a short story and it feels like it. It’s been stretched like taffy, with thin, fragile strands leading to weird, chunky blobs. Swallowing the whole thing at once to briefly savor the flavor would likely have been more satisfying. You may want to leave the theater, go directly to a bookstore and buy the source material. That’s good! But you may want to leave before the movie’s over. That’s bad.
“Abraham’s Boys” drops Friday.
