The Manifestation
Renfield was brought about by the manifestation of Nicolas Cage fans all over the world. Since the advent of Nicolas Cage and his barmy performances, the film world at large has been manifesting a single thought.
“Nic Cage as Dracula”
Whether you think the guy is a brilliant actor or an overacting scenery chewer, Nic Cage as the Prince of Darkness was a perfect match. Dracula has always demanded a scenery-chewing actor and Nic Cage had already acted as a legendary, meme-spawning vampire (kind of) with Vampire’s Kiss (This clip will jog your memory). That manifestation has given rise to the movie that has been released as “Renfield”.
So, how was the movie?
The Main Story (and Performances)
Renfield tells the story of the titular protagonist (Nicholas Hoult), a familiar to Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) helping him to eat humans and everything else. After they move to New Orleans, Renfield scopes a support group for toxic relationships. But their stories give Renfield the strength to move out of his toxic relationship with Dracula. Dracula isn’t having any of this and decides to take revenge against Renfield. This is one part of the story.
If you’ve already booked a ticket for this movie, you fully expect to see Nic Cage go full Cage as Dracula. You won’t be disappointed at all! His role as the charming, narcissistic Dracula feels like a natural evolution of the meme-worthy, scenery-chewing performance he gave in Vampire’s Kiss. While he’s the scene-stealing comedic Dracula, Cage brings out the malice, anger and narcissism just as effectively. You get the feeling that Cage can and will fuck you up in a million ways – while singing sweet nothings in your ear. That’s always a good sign of an effective Dracula performance.
I know Nicholas Hoult is a good actor. But I never realized he had decent comedic timing. As the hero of this story, Hoult brings a charming, Hugh Grant-esque affectation to his performance. His straight-man shtick does wonders for the story. I’d argue that without Hoult’s comedic timing, Renfield’s good parts wouldn’t have worked as well as they did.
Now if Renfield was just about Renfield trying to get out of Dracula’s control, that would have been fine. There’s also another story.
The Other Story (and Performances)
Renfield & Dracula get tangled in a cop drama with Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina) trying to bring down Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz) and his mom/leader of the mafia (Shohreh Aghdashloo). This part of the story, unfortunately, occupies a major part of the movie. It also isn’t very good. It’s the kind of story that would have been a fine TV movie or something. But it distracts from the main story of Renfield vs Dracula to a good extent.
Awkwafina does a good job that you wish she was part of the Renfield story and not the cop story. Ben Schwartz gets to be annoying. This movie goes ahead and wastes Shohreh Aghdashloo for a bit role. Well, at least she got to be all charming and wear some fabulous outfits, I suppose.
The rest of the cast does a decent job. Particularly, the support group that Renfield frequents, with Brandon Scott Jones acting as the support group leader.
The Technicals
If you read all of that and were expecting Renfield to be some family-friendly movie, put that thought to rest. Renfield feels like a gory B-movie. The good kind of gory B-movie
When the movie isn’t about Renfield vs Dracula or the cop drama, the movie is about Renfield kicking the heads (literally) off of people’s bodies with glorious blood effects and flying limbs. The director and the stunt team must be fans of gory B-movies. Eating bugs provides Renfield with a fraction of Dracula’s power (Sure), leading to flying limbs and taps of blood. The action feels punchy and well-directed and the gore is so cartoony that you’ll end up laughing and cheering for the action sequences.
The editing, graphics et all were fine. As a result of the jumbled story, the screenplay does feel like a bit of a mess. A fun, gory mess at times. But a mess all the same.
Conclusion.
There have been people asking how much entertainment you could mine out of the “Renfield wants out of the Dracula arrangement” story. Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement’s FX series “What We Do In The Shadows” is also a story about a human familiar helping out his vampire masters and wanting something more out of the arrangement. For 4 seasons, that series has been an absolute delight.
Most of the comedy was about the juxtaposition of the weird, magical vampire world with the mundane human world. Part of me was expecting something like that from Renfield. While Renfield’s relationship bits were good, it doesn’t have the level of wit or comedy that WWDITS has. The rest of the story was muddled by that average cop drama.
Now, if the only thing you wanted out of this movie is Nicolas Cage going full Cage as Dracula, then Renfield will scratch that itch for some time.
Otherwise, it’s a decent movie that could be have been great, given the premise and the solid cast.