Interview - Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story : Let’s talk with Jocelin Donahue & Brady Hepner

By Mulder, Los Angeles, 26 june 0002 to 26 june 2025

Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story, set for release on July 11, 2025, takes a bold detour from traditional vampire narratives by focusing not on the monstrous Count Dracula, but on the unsettling legacy left behind in his wake. Adapted from Joe Hill’s short story and directed by Natasha Kermani, the film transports us years past Dracula, into the isolated world of an older, disturbed Abraham Van Helsing, now a recluse in rural 1914 America. His two sons, Max and Rudy, are raised under his increasingly erratic, paranoia-fueled roof, caught in a psychological tug-of-war between trust and terror. Rather than indulging in gothic pageantry, Kermani drills into the internal decay of a family marked by secrecy and unspoken trauma. This is horror that simmers—a slow-burn tale of inherited fear, shifting identity, and the consequences of believing in monsters too long.

Backed by Tea Shop Productions and Illium Pictures with distribution from RLJE Films and Shudder, the 89-minute film debuted at the 2025 Overlook Film Festival, earning early praise for its unnerving restraint. The American frontier setting becomes an oppressive presence, where sunlight can’t quite pierce the psychological gloom blanketing the Van Helsing family. Titus Welliver’s portrayal of Abraham adds gravitas and ambiguity, while Brady Hepner and Judah Mackey give life to sons torn between loyalty and survival. Jocelin Donahue as the absent mother Mina and Aurora Perrineau as the mysterious Elsie inject further instability into the crumbling household. Early glimpses via the trailer hint at a dread-driven atmosphere akin to The Witch or The Others, where horror hides in withheld truths and generational scars. This isn’t just a Dracula spin-off—it’s a haunting meditation on what happens when fear becomes your family’s inheritance.

Q: This film isn’t about vampires so much as it is about what belief in monsters does to a family. How did you both tap into that underlying tension ?

Brady Hepner: Jocelin, do you want to take that one first ? 

Jocelin Donahue: I think that's what's really interesting about Natasha and Joe's take on these characters in the story—it’s that it's both scary in the domestic sense and it's scary in the world of ideas, and this gothic mythology. And, you know, does evil come from outside, or does it come from within? So there are a lot of things to play with, I think. But ultimately, it's such a grounded story about this household and these characters that it almost becomes like this dysfunctional family drama. And vampires and vampirism are an excuse for the parents to teach their kids, or protect their kids, or isolate their kids from something. So I think it’s interesting because there's a duality, as you pointed out

Brady Hepner: Oh no, I was just gonna add something on top of that. Yeah, as Jocelin said, it's almost a scare tactic—having this whole world of vampires to lead this family by Abraham into exactly what he wants them to do. So it's a super cruel world to explore with that, but I'd say fear from Abraham is really what gets—what works in leading this family into a cult-like state, almost.

Q: Jocelin, your character Mina has a ghostly presence—she’s essential but partly off-screen. How did you approach playing a character defined as much by absence as presence ?

Jocelin Donahue: Wow, yeah, that's such an interesting question. And it's true, Mina is a very haunted and haunting character. It's very tragic. Mina in the book Dracula, when you think back on her backstory, was a very plucky and courageous and brave character, and was really one of the gang. But now we catch up with her 20 years later, having lived with this trauma for so long. And she's sick, and she's isolated, so she's kind of a shell of her former self. And I think it's true—even when she's off-screen later on in the film, her presence is haunting this family, especially since there are only four of them, and they're out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a very tight-knit group. 

Q: Brady, Rudy’s journey is really about trying to understand his father. How did you approach his growing suspicion and emotional distance ?

Brady Hepner: Right. Well, it's almost a puzzle to Max, right? At the beginning, he really believes everything his father says—don’t think about it, just do it. And then I think through the film, Abraham almost gets lackadaisical in trying to keep this secret from his son. So I think the more and more that Max sees things that go against what his father once taught him, he starts to question. And then, once he starts to meet other people outside of his family that he can talk to out loud, I think that also helps him come to this realization that something's up. So I think from there, there's this underlying distrust now of, Well, maybe everything my father told me was false. And so these new ideas that start to creep into Max's head really set him down this path of. Now it's time to escape the villain.

Q: The film is emotionally claustrophobic. How did you both work together to create the broken family dynamic, even with limited screen time together ?

Jocelin Donahue: Yeah, I love my scenes with Brady, because I think she's really trying—as she's getting sicker and closer to death—she's also coming to these same realizations about Abraham and what his take is on everything. And so I think we have some nice scenes where I'm trying to reach out to Max. But it's kind of too late, you know? She loves him, and she wants to protect him, but I think she realizes too late that she also needs to protect him from Abraham. So that’s very tragic,

Brady Hepner: right. Like adding onto the whole puzzle for Max. Now he's also looking to his mother, who is trying to tell him the truth, but he also sees how sick she is. So now he has to question—is what she’s saying factual, or is this a delusion from her being sick? So I think there's this constant tension between the both of them, of Max trying to find the truth. Almost like Mina is turning to her kids, trying to get them to run away before it's too late—before they get to the stage that she’s in. I think that's a really cool relationship between Mina and her sons.

Q: What was the most emotionally challenging or memorable scene for each of you to shoot ?

Jocelin Donahue: Well, I mean, for me, there's a very intense scene that's kind of a classic trope from vampire movies where she sees Dracula's shadow, and he’s communing with her telepathically. But like Brady said, we also know that Mina is sick, so we don't know what's delusion and what's real. So that was a very emotional scene for me.

Brady Hepner: On my side, you know, it was almost impossible, I’ll say, to have these emotional scenes, because Max isn’t really allowed to display emotions. Abraham's pretty strict—Don't cry, he says that to Rudy in the scenes. But like I said, it’s really these scenes of Max watching his mother grow weaker and weaker, and seeing that his dad—who’s supposed to be this amazing doctor—cannot fix her. So he's trying to figure out, Is my mother going to be okay? So that, I would say, is really the most emotional. And then turning against Abraham in the movie is another really emotional piece, because that's a big stepping stone in Max's life—going against everything that he once stood for.

Jocelin Donahue, born November 8, 1981 in Bristol, Connecticut, is a versatile actress celebrated for her chilling lead in Ti West’s The House of the Devil (2009), which earned her the Best Actress award at Screamfest that year . A New York University alumna with a sociology degree, she transitioned smoothly between independent and mainstream fare—co-starring in Doctor Sleep (2019) and embracing layered roles such as the young Barbara Hershey in Insidious: Chapter 2. More recently, she appears opposite Titus Welliver and Brady Hepner in the upcoming horror feature Abraham’s Boys, signaling her continued presence in genre-driven, emotionally complex cinema.

Brady Hepner, a young American actor from Wallburg, North Carolina (born August 18, 2005), burst into the scene with his roles as Vance Hopper in The Black Phone (2021) and Teddy Kountze in The Holdovers (2023) . His early passion for performance transitioned from soccer to acting, debuting in Chicago Fire at age 15. In 2025, Hepner played Diller Hopkins in Kevin Williamson’s Netflix crime drama The Waterfront, but perhaps most intriguingly, he’ll portray one of Van Helsing’s sons in the forthcoming horror film Abraham’s Boys, sharing the screen with Jocelin Donahue. Despite being initially considered too old for the part, production adjusted, and he delivered a standout performance—his scene-stealing talent already making waves .

Synopsis :
Abraham van Helsing moves his two sons to the United States in an attempt to escape their past.

Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story
Written and directed by Natasha Kermani
Produced by Tim Wu, James Howard Herron, James Harris, Leonora Darby
From the Joe Hill’s original short story
Starring Titus Welliver, Brady Hepner, Judah Mackey, Jocelin Donahue , Aurora Perrineau 
Music by Brittany Allen
Cinematography : Julia Swain
Edited by : Gabriel de Urioste
Production companies : Illium Pictures / Tea Shop Productions
Distributed by RLJE Films, Shudder (United States)
Release date : July 12, 2025 (United States)
Running time : 89 minutes