Sometimes you need a fresh perspective on an old story and this movie does that. Nicholas Hoult plays the iconic Dracula toady character Robert Montague Renfield. The supporting cast is Nicolas Cage as the evil Count Dracula and Awkwafina as a cop.

The plot is simple enough: Renfield grows tired of doing Dracula’s bidding and wants to break free to live his life for himself and maybe even find a girlfriend, settle down, and take long walks on the beach instead of eating bugs and collecting bodies for his boss to feast on. Dracula doesn’t want to let him go, though. It’s a bromance of sorts and then you’ve got a drug cartel and a corrupt police force for some excess body counts.

I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining and funny this was. Nic Cage is funny just to look at, but there was more to it. A lot of the over-the-top action and gore added an element of goofiness that worked more than it didn’t.

The acting was exactly the right balance of seriousness and poking fun at these kinds of movies. While Awkwafina was an odd casting choice for a hardass cop, she managed to pull it off quite well.

The gore was absurdly excessive and it was brilliant. It’s the kind of fountains of Wayne blood that you’d expect in a Sam Raimi Evil Dead film.

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