Director Natasha Kermani Explores Generational Horror in ABRAHAM'S BOYS
- creepykingdom
- Jul 10
- 4 min read
By Shannon McGrew
In Natasha Kermani’s (Lucky, Imitation Girl) latest film, ABRAHAM’S BOYS, based on the short story by Joe Hill, we meet Max (Brady Hepner) and Rudy Van Helsing (Judah Mackey), who have spent their lives under the strict and overprotective rule of their father, Abraham (Titus Welliver).
Unaware of his dark past, they struggle to understand his paranoia and increasingly erratic behavior. But when they begin to uncover the violent truths behind their father’s history with Dracula, their world unravels, forcing them to confront the terrifying legacy they were never meant to inherit.
For the release of ABRAHAM’S BOYS, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with director Natasha Kermani. During their chat, they discussed everything from sunlight-soaked horror to a story rooted in generational trauma and familial power dynamics.
Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Natasha. To start things off, what was your reaction when you read Joe Hill’s initial story, and what inspired you to bring that story to life on the big screen?
Natasha Kermani: I loved the short story. I think that there’s a simplicity to it that I was really drawn to this sort of classic idea of a son starting to look at his father in a new light, which is, I think, a universal story that everybody can kind of relate to. However, this ingenious move to place it in the world, in the context of Dracula, a beloved classic text, was a truly exciting sandbox to play in. I got excited about the idea of taking these little, tiny threads and kernels that Joe had intentionally placed in the short story and pulling on those threads to see where we could go with them. Initially, I would say I was very drawn to Max’s story and the evolution he has undergone. He experiences great change in the short story, which is always exciting for a filmmaker. We get to pull on these threads and see where they lead us.
Dracula films and vampire stories often rely on a cold color palette with lots of grays and blues to evoke a chilling atmosphere. However, this film leans into a much warmer, brighter aesthetic, with much of the story unfolding in daylight. Could you discuss the reasoning behind that visual approach?
Natasha Kermani: I love Near Dark, and the idea of placing the film in a Western was really exciting to me. I loved the period, 1915; it was really exciting. California in 1915 is a place of change, right? It’s the New World; railroads are coming, and the West is getting connected to the rest of the world. It just felt right to me that this guy, who came here to be isolated, is now being confronted again by the world around him. Going as far as we could in the opposite direction of the original material just felt like the right instinct. Once we started playing with that, it began to feel good, and Joe was very encouraging of that.
What did you want to bring out emotionally in this adaptation that might surprise audiences who may be expecting something more traditional?
Natasha Kermani: I think first and foremost, it’s a family story. It’s a story about this family and the dynamics between them, and it’s the story of a power shift. It’s the story of a very, very powerful patriarch who is challenged, and what happens out of that challenge. The story is very grounded, and again, this is a direct result of Joe’s short story. One of the things I loved was that he grounded Abraham not first and foremost as a vampire monster hunter, but as a father who’s struggling to be a father and as a physician, and how his status as a doctor and his experience as a doctor back channels into the story of Dracula. I thought that was such an interesting instinct, looking at Abraham through that lens.
Titus Welliver, who plays Abraham, and I spoke quite a bit about expanding out Abraham’s biography because we don’t get a lot of it with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was really important to us that he be a working-class doctor who moved into the world of high society, and when we meet him in Dracula, he has a philosophy that is very much figured out. We spoke quite a bit about where that comes from, what his psychology is, what he is afraid of, what is this fear that drives Abraham every step of the way, and then how does that affect his eldest son, Max, who’s grown up under his tutelage? And then what happens when Max starts to mature and come into his consciousness? Max is coming online from being a child to being an adult, and so hilarity ensues [Laughs].
ABRAHAM’S BOYS arrives in theaters July 11, 2025.
