Renfield Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

4. The Awkwafina/Ben Schwartz Plot Is A Dud

It's tough to watch Renfield and not see it as two different movies struggling for supremacy.

On one hand you've got the master-slave dynamic between Dracula and Renfield, and on the other, you've got an aggressively mediocre crime subplot involving traffic cop Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina) and gangster Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz).

Though Awkwafina and Schwartz play their roles serviceably enough, this entire story feels like it belongs in another movie, and when it's eventually integrated into the Dracula/Renfield dynamic in a major way, it feels incredibly forced.

In the first two acts, any time the action cuts away to either Rebecca or Teddy the movie sags, because these characters and their journeys can't hold a candle to the far more compelling and entertaining standoff between Dracula and the title character.

It's a jarring, bizarre decision to shoehorn such a bland, ill-fitting side-plot into a core concept that had plenty of mileage on its own to sustain a 90-minute movie.