Edition #034: Renfield
Thank you, Wiccan Tumblr!
With Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, and Ben Schwartz among its cast members, you would be forgiven for thinking that Renfield (2023) is not necessarily a horror movie.
And you’d be right!
But an action/horror/comedy film still fits the bill at HJ. It’s my dungeon and I’ll review what I please.
I’m not particularly thesis-driven over here but if I were, it’d be something like: Here for the ghouls.
Or: Here for Nicholas Hoult.
What’s the deal?
Renfield (Hoult) is tired of serving Dracula (Cage). He joins a support group for codependent people where he can (almost) freely complain about his narcissistic and demanding boss.
When he tries to help a fellow support group member by bringing her abusive boyfriend to Dracula as a snack, he ends up getting inadvertently involved with the Lobo crime family (Schwartz) and by extension, Officer Quincy (Awkwafina) who is hell-bent on bringing them down.
When Dracula finds out that Renfield has turned against him, he teams up with the Lobo crime family to bring Renfield down. Vampires + guns! What follows can only be described as buckets of blood. The gore is immense and splashy and fun.
In the end, Dracula and the Lobo crime family are defeated, and Renfield sets off to make a new life for himself, free from codependency, in good old NoLa.
I can’t stop thinking about...
Dracula’s bug-eating boyfriend.
Who is Renfield, really?
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Renfield was an inmate at an insane asylum who ate loads of bugs. He became Dracula’s servant, and Dracula killed him for his empathy towards humans.
He’s been portrayed over time as everything from a feral madman to a giggling groveler. Always pathetic, always somewhat off-camera.
The idea of centering a Dracula movie on Renfield has great merit. Let’s get this man more bugs. Let's put him in pastel sweaters. Let’s give him some self-help mantras to recite. Let’s give him some time off!
He is no longer a mindless minion, but a burnt out millennial on a mission to find himself.
What would you do for a break?
Horrorshow Jane
PS: Here is a deleted dance scene from the movie. You’re welcome.