*SPOILERS BELOW*

Please note – this is a random gathering of my thoughts on the film and by no means meant to be a review of any sort.

Renfield has so much going on that at times it almost seems too much. There is a crime family, crooked cops, a potential romance, an estranged sisters backstory, an underlying theme of healthy relationships and reaching out for support… not to mention there is also some decent sweater game on the part of Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield.. This mish-mash feels straight out of the late 80s and makes a bit more sense when you consider that Robert Kirkman likely grew up watching films that made it seem like all of these elements are necessary for them to even exist. These days so much horror is stripped down and focused (Caveat and Skinamarink for example) that we forget that horror would (and does) exist concurrently in a world with all of these other messy things going on.

I feel that up until recently one could not comprehend the character of Renfield and his acts unless you understood that there was something “wrong” with *him* (particularly in the category of mental illness). Only someone truly deranged could serve a monster such as Dracula with such zeal… This movie takes that idea and subverts it – there isn’t actually anything wrong with Renfield. He was manipulated and is now in way too deep. Any vulnerable person could be taken advantage of by a powerful and dangerous beast such as Dracula, no hypnosis required. In this movie Dracula is painted as a leech in all senses of the word, not just as some fearful creature that should be obeyed lest you be killed. To me, Cage plays this Dracula as a horrible *person* and not just a monster, particularly when he tries to blame Renfield for all the horrible things he was essentially forced to do. I guess that is certainly a modern take on the relationship between Dracula and Renfield – the accountability lies with the abuser here and the abused strives to take their power back.

Renfield’s apartment is a showcase of another subversion of the Dracula concept – colour. And why not? Our minds automatically shift to black and greys (and a splash of red) when thinking about Dracula. The apartment of Hoult’s Renfield is a cringe-inducing combination of bright textiles and motivational posters that look like they all came out of a book some 4th grader bought at a Scholastic Book Fair and hastily taped up as soon as they got home. The apartment is essentially an act of rebellion against Dracula on Renfield’s journey of reclaiming his power so it is no wonder it is so bright.

Ben Schwartz as Teddy has got to be one of my favourite takes on the dumb mommy’s boy criminal I have ever seen. He was a highlight of the movie for me. I wanted to love Nicolas Cage’s Dracula, but all I can say is that it sufficed for me. He didn’t stand out, but he did not detract from the movie either. If he meant to play this character just hard enough to make sure he did not steal scenes or make the focus Dracula ( as opposed to Renfield, the titular character), then he achieved that goal.

On a more personal note – Props for the sterotype-free character of Quincy (Awkwafina). As a Japanese-Canadian, do I appreciate that Awkwafina (a visibly Asian actor) plays the love interest and her struggles with her sister are a fairly big part of the movie? Yes. Do I like that her character was a cop and her sister an FBI agent? Not really. ACAB. I feel like everything her character accomplishes could likely have been done if she had a different profession. Perhaps the portrayal of Rebecca Quincy is so inoffensive because it might have been written for a white person and it was never altered, but who’s to say…