Shudder Saturday: Abraham's Boys (2025)

I have liked some of the previous directorial work of Natasha Kermani. I have also liked a lot of the writing of Joe Hill (including his collection, 20th Century Ghosts, that contains this story, although I cannot say that I remember it). Titus Welliver being in a main role will also get me to watch something. Which makes it all the more frustrating that Abraham's Boys was such a disappointing work. There's an interesting idea somewhere in the middle of it, but Kermani isn't able to explore it in the best way.

Welliver plays the Abraham of the title, and he's one Mr. Van Helsing. He's now married to Mina (Jocelin Donahue). They have two sons, named Max (Brady Hepner) and Rudy (Judah Mackey). Things might be good for them, but the work of a Van Helsing is never done, which is something the sons need to learn as they start to worry about their parents.

Here are the things I liked about Abraham's Boys. The performances from Welliver, Donahue, Hepner, Mackey, Aurora Perrineau, and Jonathan Howard (playing Arthur Holmwood). That is all. Okay, maybe I enjoyed some of the last scenes, but not half as much as I expected to. The strength of this film lies in the performances, and I think it would be very interesting to see this adapted into a one-man show, with someone as capable as Welliver carrying the entire thing on his shoulders.

That doesn't mean that I disliked everything else here. I just didn't find anything else very interesting or impressive. The visual style throughout is sparse and quite dull. I get that it is aiming to reflect the rudimentary way of life apparently preferred by the main patriarch, but it doesn't do anything to improve the weak and disappointing screenplay. Kermani seems to have too much faith in the central idea, but it's only good enough if used as a starting point for an actual journey. There's no journey here. In fact, it feels as if it spends 89 minutes going absolutely nowhere.

The strangest thing about this is that I can't see why Kermani was drawn to it. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe she viewed it as an interesting challenge, but was subsequently undone by it. Or maybe she just wanted to try something different. It's hard to see see any connecting threads between this and her previous two features though (note: I've not seen Shattered, the 2017 film she directed), and I would argue that she clearly works better when it's a screenplay with more of an overt female view of certain subject matter. Whether or not any of my theorising is correct, I can at least opt to blame Joe Hill for this. That way I can still look forward to whatever Kermani decides to do next.

3/10

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The Holdovers (2023)

Considering the fact that it's a Christmas movie, it's no surprise to see that The Holdovers was released in the USA just over a year ago (the wide release was in November 2023). What IS surprising, but sadly not unexpected, is the fact that the UK release was delayed until mid-January. As good or bad as the movie may be, few people feel the urge to rush out and see a Christmas movie once the main holiday season has been and gone. Now is the right time to watch The Holdovers, if you want the best experience with it anyway, but you can then choose to rewatch it whenever you like.

Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a teacher at an all-boys boarding school called Barton Academy. Drawing the short straw in the run up to the holiday season, Hunham ends up staying on the school premises over Christmas with those who aren't able to head home. A few stragglers need supervision, but the central group is eventually whittled down to Hunham, Mary Lamb (the cafeteria manager, and a grieving mother, played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph), and a smart, but depressed and troubled, student named Angus Tully (played by Dominic Sessa). Although these three wouldn't normally spend so much time together, they end up going through some good and bad experiences that bond and change them, for the better. 

You can spend a lot of time praising director Alexander Payne for making such an effort to emulate the look and feel of '70s movies here, helped in no small part by cinematographer Eigil Bryld. You can also praise his relationship with his cast members. Writer David Hemingson also deserves many compliments, especially when it comes to an insult delivered in the third act that is up there with the very best I have ever heard in any movie (and so delightfully unexpected that I burst out laughing the first time I heard it). But it's hard not to just shower this with love because of a perfect trio of central performances being rooted in a low-key tale of Christmas "redemption". Hunham is, in many ways, the Scrooge due to be visited by spirits, but the spirits who do their bit to transform him are still encased in living and breathing human flesh.

Giamatti has been delivering nothing but greatness for decades now, but his portrayal of Hunham easily ranks alongside his very best performances. He may have one lazy eye, achieved with the use of a special contact lens, but nothing else in the role can be described that way. Giamatti has a ball with a fully-rounded and wonderfully-flawed character, the teacher who eventually sees one or two things that he can learn from others. Sessa is almost just as good, and the real heart of the film shows teacher and student butting heads in between discovering common ground, but both men are overshadowed in a couple of scenes that allow Randolph to take your heart and yank it down to your knees as she struggles to contain or direct some of the despair she feels at the loss of her son. Carrie Preston is very sweet in her supporting role, Andrew Garman is the headmaster who gives Hunham his holiday caretaker role, and Gillian Vigman and Tate Donovan come along at the end of the movie just in time to underline the importance of the journey that our main characters have been on.

I've watched this twice now, and the second viewing was just as good as the first, but I am trying to consider one or two very minor criticisms that stop me from rating it as perfect. The runtime could have been cut down by a few minutes, it just never feels as if it has to be 133 minutes long, and one or two scenes don't feel like anything more than fun vignettes. And yet . . . and yet . . . I love every minute of this, and I love every scene. The vignettes still feature details that reveal even more about the characters, and about how their relationships develop throughout the movie. So, on second thoughts, my criticisms are not criticisms. And I'll rate this as perfect.

10/10

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The Black Phone (2022)

Based on the short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone is a tale, not entirely unlike some other Hill stories, that feels VERY much like something his dad would write. You get a nice feeling of Americana from the past (it's set in the late 1970s), you get one main character imbued with some magical power, there are horrible bullies, a parent who likes the bottle more than anything else, and the main villain constantly tries to act as if he is working in service of a higher power. I can't see anyone who liked It, or the stories in Different Seasons, finding too much to dislike here.

Ethan Hawke plays 'The Grabber', a masked kidnapper of children who has been reducing the population of a small part of Denver. He meets his match when he grabs young Finney (Mason Thames), but he doesn't realise just how much help Finney is going to have when it comes to staying alive. Finney has a sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), who has been having scarily accurate dreams, which means she may be able to locate her brother. And Finney also has the titular phone, attached to the wall of the relatively bare room he is trapped in. It occasionally rings, something that 'The Grabber' puts down to static electricity, but Finney soon becomes the first person in some time to hear voices through the receiver. Those voices are the previous victims of 'The Grabber', and they have some advice to offer Finney.

Directed by Scott Derrickson, someone who has been delivering solid entertainment for about two decades now (with his last feature being the first Doctor Strange movie), The Black Phone is a supernatural-tinged thriller that works as well as it does thanks to those involved not looking to give themselves any kind of get-out clause. The thriller aspect is solid, and there are moments of tension in between the more predictable plot beats, but the supernatural aspect is equally solid, and it's never dropped in favour of some attempt to tidy everything up in the final scenes. 

The script, written by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, effectively delivers all of the information required within the first 20-30 minutes to then really focus on the tension for the remainder of the movie. There are some obvious points made that will be referred back to, but there are also some more subtle details. The 103-minute runtime speeds by, but underpinning the basic thrills and chills is a pleasantly unexpected comment, deliberate or not, about giving victims a voice, and keeping their names more relevant and recognisable than the name of their abuser. You get to learn the names of a number of kids as the movie plays out. You don't learn the real name of Hawke's character, unless I missed one quick mention of it anywhere.

While he's not onscreen for that long, Hawke is excellent, and chilling, in his role. His character casts such a long shadow that I never really felt his lack of physical absence to be a problem (although I have seen some mention that they were surprised by how few main scenes he was in). Thames is the one who carries most of the film, giving a performance that marks him out as someone to keep an eye on. The same goes for McGraw, who makes a strong impression as the feisty and gifted Gwen. The other child actors, most often seen depicting their characters as The Talking Dead, also do well. James Ransone is a highlight, playing a coked-up armchair detective who ends up closer to the truth than the people who are officially on the case. The only person who didn't work in their role was Jeremy Davies, stuck with portraying the drunken father who has to deliver some unnecessary clunky backstory that I initially through was going to set up some extended Hill/King cinematic universe.

I really liked this. It's a simple premise that is executed pretty perfectly (it probably helped that most of the film is set in one room, allowing Derrickson and co. to optimise the use of the budget elsewhere), it doesn't run overlong, and it doesn't feel as if the ending is setting up a sequel. None of those things should be so rare in modern cinema, but watching a film getting everything just right serves as a reminder of how rare they are.

8/10

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