Renfield Review
Theatrical Movie Review
I’ve always been more of a zombie fan than a vampire fan. Vampires always feel a little too cool for me, whereas zombies are a lot more my speed. But Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi won me over with their vampire comedy, “What We Do in the Shadows.” The television show of the same name further convinced me that it was possible to make vampire content that was amusing. So the trailers for Chris McKay’s “Renfield” had me intrigued.
Robert Montegue Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) is a familiar to none other than the world famous Dracula (Nicolas Cage). Being a familiar means that he has a portion of Dracula’s powers, and in exchange, he must find victims for Dracula to feed on. While this proposal was good at first, it quickly became a burden for Renfield, eventually leading him to a co-dependents self-help group.
Meanwhile, Rebecca (Awkwafina), an officer with the New Orleans PD is chasing after Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz) of the Lobo gang, notorious drug runners. When Rebecca’s investigation leads to a connection with Renfield, they need to figure out how to stop Dracula from his plan of world domination.
This is a movie of some extreme highs and lows. The performances by Hoult and Cage are really phenomenal. Cage brings a theatrical air to his portrayal of the Dark Prince that is so over the top as to be as terrifying as it is hilarious - think a Victorian Castor Troy from “Face/Off.” Every time he was on screen, it was great. Hoult also brings a lot of humor and heart to Renfield. I also really enjoyed Brandon Scott Jones as Mark, the facilitator for the self-help group. His delivery is pitch perfect.
Unfortunately, this movie is plagued by a really scattered plot. I love both Awkwafina and Schwartz, but their characters felt wrong for this film, and the whole plot with the Lobo gang just didn’t come together for me. The idea of a vampire’s familiar in a support group for co-dependents is really clever, and I feel like if they had gone hard on that, it could have been a hilarious story, instead of a so-so story with some high moments.
The action is another place where this movie doesn’t quite work. It has some great gore, but the sequences are so frenetic and the cuts so copious that I didn’t feel like it could ever be fully realized. I think there were some good set pieces that could have been really fun, but the best ones were all shown in the red-band trailer for the movie, and the rest were just too manic to land.
Overall, this movie just feels unfocused. It has too much story to just be dumb fun and too little story to actually feel cohesive. “Renfield” feels like it can’t commit to the movie that it purports to be, and that’s a real shame. Maybe it needed to hit a few more meetings before it was ready to be released.
This review originally appeared in The Dominion Post on April 16, 2023.