Sometimes your boss can be a real monster, but usually not as literal as Dracula. Renfield, who has been working for him for decades, does not have an easy life. An eternally humiliated and abused assistant decides to change everything when he meets a New Orleans cop…
Rebecca (Awkwafina) is an ordinary cop bent on overthrowing the city’s most powerful mafia family, led by Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her son Tedward (Ben Schwartza). Inspired by Rebecca’s willingness to stand up for what’s right, Renfield begins to envision a better future where he can escape the rigors of his nocturnal existence and enjoy walking among the living again.
Galapagos Films ‘Renfield’ press kit
The idea for such an unconventional approach to the story of Dracula and his servant Renfield was the merit of the acclaimed screenwriter and producer Robert Kirkman – known, among others, as the creator of the TV hit The Walking Dead .
Robert came up with the idea of a departure from traditional Dracula stories, which have always focused on his origins or what happened to Dracula after some event, says producer David Alpert. – Robert asked the question: what if we told the story of Dracula from the perspective of someone from his environment?
Renfield was the obvious candidate. The character originated in the pages of Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula , published in 1897, as an inmate of an English lunatic asylum who eats flies, spiders, birds, and other creatures to gain life force and achieve a sort of immortality. He also starred in director Tod Browning’s 1931 film adaptation of this legendary novel, starring Bela Lugosi as an aristocratic vampire and Dwight Frye as the anxious Renfield. Decades later, musician and actor Tom Waits portrayed the role in Francis Ford Coppola’s drama Dracula , starring Gary Oldman as a mythical vampire.
Galapagos Films ‘Renfield’ press kit
Excited to put the servant at the center of his own narrative, Kirkman wrote Renfield’s script , which focused on the toxic relationship between him and Dracula, perfectly blending dark comedy with gleefully over-the-top horror.
We looked at what the ultimate relationship of codependency is, which is the relationship between Renfield and the extreme narcissist, Dracula,” says Alpert. – The story is presented in a pop-psychological form, which makes it easy to draw huge comic potential from it.
On the screen, we see Oscar ® winner Nicolas Cage in an unusual incarnation as Prince Dracula. Trying to give the character well known to movie fans a bit of freshness, the actor not only carefully analyzed all previous vampire films, but also looked to classic productions presenting toxic relationships for inspiration. He thought of The Graduate (1967), directed by Mike Nichols, and Anne and Dustin’s relationship:
When I was thinking about creating my character, Anne’s voice started coming to my mind and I was very happy about that. But still, it was completely mine. Everything that comes to me as an inspiration is always filtered through my sensitivity and experience.
Galapagos Films ‘Renfield’ press kit
Cage’s challenge in the role was to believably portray the dynamics of the relationship between Dracula and Nicholas Hoult’s character – finding the nuances of their relationship so as to retain both the comedic and dramatic feel of the film.
The subject matter itself isn’t funny, it’s terrifying,” admits Cage. “But at the heart of this bizarre relationship is a special, twisted kind of love that at times causes the servant to be treated as the master’s beloved child, and then all this sympathy turns into brutal abuse. It’s really not an easy topic to tackle, and it’s especially hard to bring it all together in a comedic way.
Renfield will be released in Poland on July 20 on Blu-ray™ and DVD .