Renfield opens in theaters on April 14, 2023.
Nicholas Cage plays an exquisite Count Dracula in Renfield – I repeat, Nicholas Cage graces Renfield with a vampire portrayal for the ages. Sadly, outside of Cageula (or is it DracuCage?) it’s a movie that’s sloppy in rewarding and frustrating ways. The good news is a cartoonish amount of carnage that explodes red juices like Capri Sun pouches attached to lit dynamite; the bad is a wishy-washy consistency when it comes to its sense of humor. Renfield is an action-horror-comedy about toxic relationships and codependency that never manages to unify the subgenres that fight against one another within it, but still entertains thanks to an ensemble cast having too much fun.
The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman provided the original idea for Renfield that would become Ryan Ridley’s script, finding comedy in Dracula and his famous familiar’s insanely unhealthy relationship. Nicholas Hoult plays an endearing weirdo as the movie’s namesake Renfield, a depressed fellow in an abusive professional arrangement with his bloodsucking master. TThis movie operates with an early 2000s mentality; it’s not about finding rationale in why Renfield gains superpowers from eating bugs or other mythology shifts from the source material, but rather in appreciating the zaniness that spins out of control. Renfield and Dracula end up in modern New Orleans, caught between the Lobo crime family (Ben Schwartz plays loudmouth Lobo son Teddy) and a tenacious police officer (Awkwafina), and it turns out to be a perfect location for sinners and saints to reveal themselves.
There’s plenty of Universal Monsters love and reverence in Renfield as it recreates sequences of the 1931 black-and-white classic Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, except with Cage and Hoult. Director Chris McKay didn’t make a straightforward supernatural horror film, but leaned mightily into gothic vampire aesthetics such as Dracula’s top-hat-and-cape costume, his throne of blood pouches, and the grimy nature of the Count’s lightless hideaway. Renfield’s pale, ghostly complexion and Dracula’s increasingly damaged evolutions with missing skin patches don’t undersell vampire grotesqueries. It’s never a scary film, yet McKay does well injecting rich horror vibes throughout its DNA, like Dracula’s batty transformation or speedy smoke monster mode.
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As mentioned, Nicolas Cage slays countless scenes as a Dracula who has the lothario charms to hypnotize innocents, the madness of a god-creature sick of hiding behind shadows, and a craziness in his eyes we’ve seen from the most committed of Cage’s performances. He’s an alpha Dracula who could fit into Universal’s earliest horror classics, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Interview with the Vampire — he’s got hints of vampiric personality from them all.
What doesn’t work as well are jumbled subplots that butt heads as tones collide. Rebecca is the beat cop who lives to uphold her murdered father’s pristine reputation amidst a dirty force, which sees the usually hilarious Awkwafina stuck with a less enthusiastic police procedural arc that doesn’t always come together. Hoult himself sports rave-worthy chemistry with Cage, but solo shopping montages or evaluations of widespread “therapy speak” never produce the brilliant Dracula retelling from a psychiatrist’s perspective that the trailer got my hopes up for. There are standout moments scattered throughout — look no further than Ben Schwartz stealing scenes as a mama’s boy Scarface-meets-Jean-Ralphio from Parks & Recreation — McKay just struggles to find any stability in this scattershot journey.
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What does work is the surprisingly gruesome level of violence on display from the very first decapitation. A supercharged, spider-fed Renfield punches a head off like something out of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, which appropriately sets expectations. McKay’s SFX department goes ham, adding ungodly amounts of spilled blood as Renfield pulverizes Lobo baddies or Dracula carves through dinner, though I wish those splatters could have been more practical (clothing stains never seem to match amounts of animated liquid) and yet the digital bloodiness adds a diabolically cartoonish accent.
Hoult becomes somewhat of an action star as Renfield leaps around a restaurant shootout, severing arms with decorative serving platters, going above and beyond as a vampire action movie with the lead as this acrobatic, ass-kicking assistant. I can’t say cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen’s brand of frantic shaky-cam bouncing is my favorite style; still, it’s not bad enough to eviscerate fangs-out excitement (as it was in, say, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins).
Throughout it all, Renfield is a better horror tribute than it is an action spectacle. However, it’s still a better action spectacle than it is a quirky partnership comedy — and in turn, it’s a better quirky partnership comedy than it is a criminal thriller. And yet, nothing in any of those aspects is damning enough to break Cage’s stranglehold on the screen, and Hoult, Awkwafina, Schwartz, and Shohreh Aghdashloo as the Lobo matriarch also score their highlights.