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SYFY WIRE Vampires

‘Renfield’ red band trailer brings the gore, blood, violence, and F-bombs

No one ever accused Dracula of having a pristine mouth.

By Benjamin Bullard
Nicolas Cage in Renfield (2023)

Bloodthirsty, belligerent, and brutally funny, Nicolas Cage looks right at home in the sanguine red band trailer for Renfield, the Dracula-themed horror-comedy from Universal Pictures that’s just gnashing at the ticket gate for its April 14 premiere.

Nearly everyone, in fact, appears pleased as blood-red punch to play in the guts and gore that splash the screen in the NSFW version of Universal’s final trailer, as long-suffering sidekick Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) weighs the limit of how much crap he’s willing to put up with from Dracula (Cage) before finally staging the world’s most hilariously hemorrhagic “I quit” walkout. Freed from the gloomy confines of an all-audiences trailer rating, Cage and crew come alive in a clip steeped in copious servings of swears, dismemberments, and enough blood to fill a New Orleans casket.

Check out Renfield's red band trailer below:

There’s a sort of oil-meets-water vibe to Renfield’s funny setup. Hoult’s everyman exasperation feels fully relatable as the Count’s glorified personal assistant, while Cage, on the other hand, just feels so gleefully evil. Renfield made the fated mistake of being an almost-typical guy before he ever accepted the whole vampire-sitting gig, a 24/7 style-cramping albatross that leads him to say things like “I just want a normal life again!” with all the conviction of a runner hell-bent on never, ever fetching Dracula another human snack.

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There’s fat chance of that, though, as long as needy Nosferatu hovers somewhere nearby. But with help from thought-she’d-seen-it-all NOLA cop Rebecca Quincy (the reliably hilarious Awkwafina), Renfield finally takes a stab at defanging the world’s suckiest boss…and as the trailer shows, his employer isn’t exactly prone to offering generous severance packages.

Inspired by Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 Dracula novel and spun into a story idea by The Walking Dead co-creator Robert Kirkman, Renfield comes with a screenplay from Community writing veteran Ryan Ridley. Directed by Chris McKay (Robot Chicken, The LEGO Batman Movie, The Tomorrow War), the dark horror-comedy stars Cage, Hoult, and Awkwafina alongside Adrian Martinez (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) and Ben Schwartz (M.O.D.O.K., Sonic the Hedgehog).

Grab the garlic and wait for daylight to break on April 14, when Renfield rises up against the powers of darkness in theaters nationwide. Get tickets here!