Today I’m looking at another Dracula related movie that centers on something other than the main story. Also, like The Last Voyage of the Demeter, this movie ends up featuring a lot more Dracula than I was initially expecting. Though I think this movie ends up being probably better for that use rather than diminished by it.

As one might suspect, the story centers around the titular character of Renfield, Dracula’s familiar/servant. The story is set in the modern day with the events of the novel and particularly the Bela Lugosi movie having played out more or less the same but with Dracula surviving. Renfield is going to support groups for people in abusive codependent relationships, not just because he is in one but also so that he can use the abusers as food for his master. In so doing, he winds up getting tangled up in the criminal underworld when the mob sends a hitman to go after someone he was already going to get. Also, Renfield has super powers whenever he eats a bug.

While the basic premise of the movie is pitched as a horror/comedy, it honestly feels much closer to a gory superhero movie than anything else. Renfield’s ability to gain “Dracula powers” when he eats a bug makes it so that most of the big confrontations in this movie more closely resemble something like Deadpool than Dracula. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad thing for the movie. It’s a fun, action packed romp with a lot of jokes that end up landing far better than I was expecting them to. The only problem is if you go in expecting something more horror focused because, outside of the admittedly copious amounts of CGI blood, there isn’t much in the way of scares or horror.

The real horror in the movie is the focus on abusive relationships and the control that they can have on someone’s life. This theme is obviously the forefront of the movie and not a subtle thing and that actually hampers it a bit. The affirmations and reading from self-help books would be decent as either a throwaway gag or as a more blatant framing of the theme for those that didn’t get it. Unfortunately, it ends up being used so often in the film and usually in the comedic scenes that it can feel like the movie is making fun of those support groups. I understand it is a comedy but Renfield telling Dracula that he deserves happiness and freedom being done for laughs is low hanging fruit and the same scene could easily have been a dramatic, emotional one.

On a final note, I will say that Nicholas Cage as Dracula gives just enough of that wild energy that people are always trying to capture when they cast him. It’s a good role for him and is just over-the-top enough without it becoming distracting, like the worst of the Nic Cage stuff.

Score: 3.5 out of 5