The Ending Of Renfield Explained

We've all had bosses who drove us up the wall with their demanding nature or controlling impulses. But few have had to deal with bosses like the one R.M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has to grapple with every day of his life. Based on a character from both Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" and the original 1931 Universal monster movie of the same name, Renfield is the familiar to Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage), spending his days bringing carcasses for the vampire to devour. The new movie "Renfield" chronicles its titular lead trying to please his master in modern-day New Orleans, with Renfield being more conscious than ever that he's trapped in an unhealthy toxic relationship.

Trying to get out of that dynamic is always a challenge, especially when the toxic person you're dealing with is a bloodthirsty immortal. The movie follows Renfield confronting those challenges head-on as he attempts to create a new life for himself, incurring the wrath of both Dracula and the local Lobo crime family. The tonally-complicated antics that ensue from Renfield's endeavors eventually lead to an ending that throws a lot of blood, punching, and emotional catharsis at the viewer. So much is tossed at moviegoers that it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of what's happening and why. To help cut through all that chaos, let's break down the ending of "Renfield" and the ways it resolves the story of this beleaguered fixture of Dracula stories.

As the unforgettable opening chords of the My Chemical Romance song "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)" kick in on the soundtrack of "Renfield," one thing quickly becomes apparent: It's time for an energetic montage. Specifically, Renfield and Quincy gather up all the tools they'll need to fight Dracula and his minions. As they scramble across New Orleans looking for crucifixes and anything else traditionally associated with killing vampires, their determination to finally take out this narcissistic creep grows ever higher.  But the most important weapon in the duo's arsenal is simply bugs. Since Renfield gets his supernatural powers from chomping on insects, it's time for him to go to every bait-and-tackle store in the nearby radius and buy as many tiny critters as possible to consume. 

This mission results in a gross-out comedy moment in which Renfield gobbles down a horde of insects loudly in the passenger seat of Quincy's automobile, inspiring disgust from the driver. It's not a pretty sight, but it's a necessary one. Once all those bugs are inside Renfield's stomach, he's ready to confront danger head-on.  It's a shame most of the weapons seen here (namely old-school vampire hunter tools like crucifixes) don't come into play in the ensuing finale, which renders this montage a bit superfluous. However, at least this sequence ensures that audiences get a welcome taste of My Chemical Romance.

While Renfield dispatches an assortment of random vampire-powered goons with ease, this long-suffering assistant to Dracula will need to work a little harder to ward off Teddy Lobo. Not only has the creep been given supernatural abilities, but Dracula has now chosen him to be his new familiar. This revelation makes the ensuing duel between Renfield and Lobo one between two sides of the same coin, with the protagonist having to duke it out with an unabashedly evil version of himself. All during their skirmish, Lobo is constantly taunting his opponent, including emphasizing how he's "the yin" to Renfield's "yang," which causes the film's lead character to observe that the duo's dynamic isn't quite as dramatic as all that. "We've barely met twice!" Renfield proclaims before Lobo attacks him in a rage.

Ryan Ridley's screenplay tries to sidestep the issue that this critical fight scene involves two characters who don't really have much of a pre-existing relationship, but lampshading the problem doesn't suddenly inject lots of underlying meaning into the duel. With no incredible editing or fight choreography to mitigate the lack of compelling dramatic stakes, this duel between Renfield and Lobo is flatter than it should be. This is true even with the over-the-top way Renfield takes out Lobo, which involves kicking the mobster so hard in the stomach that he spews out fluids from both ends before dying.

Quincy's betrayal of Dracula is followed up by the most awkward portion of the movie's climax. The clumsy writing of this stretch of the story is made immediately apparent by a strange moment where Quincy presses the button to open the windows ... and they don't open. She presses it two more times, cursing to herself that they're malfunctioning. This would seem to be a bit teeing up Quincy and Renfield needing to look for other ways to defeat Dracula, but instead, the windows immediately open after two more presses of the button. The brief malfunction could be cut entirely from the sequence — it doesn't even provide a brief gag.

As all that sunlight pours in, Dracula howls in pain and catches fire. To escape his surroundings, he turns into a pack of fire-covered bats. As he exits the room, it's revealed that Ella Lobo has just been hanging out in the hallway outside her office this whole time. She's then knocked to the ground unconscious by the fleeing bats, a tremendously abrupt way to get her out of the finale. After this moment, Renfield and Quincy track Dracula to a torture chamber in the Lobo family compound and continue their fight with the monster there. Clearly, screenwriter Ryan Ridley and director Chris McKay wanted to shift the action of "Renfield" from that office to a location filled with weapons the heroes could use. The transition between these two backdrops, though, is distractingly inelegant.

It's not enough to just keep Dracula suspended in a circle, though — Renfield and Quincy have to destroy the beast. Luckily, the pair have cornered Dracula in a torture chamber loaded with weapons. After hearing Dracula's final words about wanting to spend a season in the deepest pits of Hell, Renfield and Quincy go to town on dismembering, burning, and torturing the vampire in every way imaginable. Renfield's recurring narration throughout the movie pops in again to remark to the audience that neither he nor his cohort could be exactly sure what would kill his old boss, so they tried to just throw everything at the wall and see what stuck.

Going this route inspires some of the more amusingly heightened gags in all of "Renfield." The inexplicable presence of entities like a cement mixer or an ice cube tray as ways of brutally killing Dracula are quite amusing sight gags on their own, while such cartoonish ways of dispatching a bloodsucker are far from common in the pantheon of vampire movies. Eventually, the barrage of sight gags and creative murders give way to Renfield and Quincy dispatching a bunch of chopped-up cubes of Dracula's corpse down a deep pit. Renfield himself notes in the narration that he's far from certain that this will kill off Dracula forever, but he certainly won't be able to heal easily. 

Of all the "Star Trek" movies "Renfield" could've taken narrative cues from, it's doubtful anyone would expect it to be "Star Into Darkness." However, the final scene does indeed give off vibes of "Into Darkness," specifically regarding how magic blood is used to cure all problems. This parallel comes about in the final scene of "Renfield," when the movie's narration is revealed to be coming from Renfield speaking to his support group of people in abusive relationships. Previously, Dracula violently devoured and murdered all these souls, but they've now come back to life thanks to the power of the ghoul's blood. Though comments from support group leader Mark (Brendan Scott Jones) about how he's seen things in the afterlife that he cannot un-see indicate this isn't a consequence-free decision, everything still seems mostly fine.

Though clearly a way to give "Renfield" a happy ending, abruptly resurrecting so many people and leaning so hard on magic blood to solve all your movie's problems proves as frustrating here as it did in "Star Trek Into Darkness" a decade earlier. The camera even lingers on a jug of the blood (situated next to some cookies and napkins) for the final shot of the movie, as if to further remind viewers of such a strange narrative detail. "Renfield" has now reached a crowd-pleasing conclusion, though its strained ways of getting there leave much to be desired.