Awkwafina

• “Don’t make it a sexual thing!” Nicolas Cage’s Dracula tells Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield in this new interpretation of the classic vampire movie.
• “I eat boys … I eat girls.” In a line, the film deftly dismisses a century of post-Freudian interpretations of Bram Stoker’s vampire story – and with justification.
• In its recognition that gaslighting and emotional abuse are about control rather than desire, the film provides a version of the vampire myth in tune with contemporary debates.

Citational vampires

• This means that they compulsively reference other vampire films, playfully reworking the conventions of the genre.
• In Renfield, an eye-catching sequence transposes Cage and Hoult’s faces onto footage from Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931).
• They accused the studio of profiting from Lugosi’s image after his death through merchandising, initiating a protracted case they eventually lost.

Action versus comedy

• But unlike previous attempts to hybridise the vampire and action genres, such as the Blade and Underworld series of the early 2000s, it does not take itself too seriously.
• There is a long tradition of vampire comedy.
• The self-referential nature of vampire cinema gives rise to comedy.
• While comparable contemporary vampire film What We Do in the Shadows and its spin-off TV series allow emotional insights to surface through the comedy, in Renfield any potential profundity is deflected into action stunts.