When “Renfield” begins, Renfield knows he’s got as much work to do on himself as anything else — in a flashback combined with Renfield’s narration, it’s established that this Renfield is intended to be the same as (or at least has a similar origin to) Dwight Frye’s Renfield from Tod Browning’s 1931 “Dracula.” In that movie, as is here, Renfield was a solicitor looking to help the Count make a real estate deal, something that Renfield later admits was a selfish move on his part.
Before he can admit his own faults to himself, however, Renfield is attempting to shift the goalposts of his codependency. He’s using the support group not to discuss his issues but to listen to the other members discuss theirs, in hopes of learning about toxic manipulators who he can then go hunt down and bring to Dracula to eat. He does just this with a few ska-loving would-be drug dealers, who ripped off a local New Orleans crime family, the Lobos. When the black sheep son of the Lobo family, Tedward (Ben Schwartz), witnesses Renfield literally tear apart the assassin sent to kill the thieves, he vows to hunt the strange man down.
Meanwhile, Tedward and the Lobo family have beef with a NOLA cop who can’t be bought, Rebecca (Awkwafina), thanks in large part to the Lobos being responsible for the death of her hero cop father. When Tedward is ordered by the matriarch of the Lobos, Bella-Francesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo), to whack Rebecca, he confronts her at a chintzy Bourbon Street restaurant, the same one Renfield is using to scout out potential Dracula food. In a spectacularly gory altercation, Renfield saves Rebecca’s life, causing the wayward Familiar to be dubbed by her as a “hero.”
