Renfield offers up two things a lot of us have always wanted to see: 1) Nicolas Cage as Dracula, and 2) Nicolas Cage AT HIS CAGIEST as Dracula.
Our favorite eccentric screen legend (who basically did a test run decades ago in the mega-insane Vampire’s Kiss) plays the immortal bloodsucker as a charismatic seducer, a merciless killer, and — most importantly — a narcissistic asshole. That last part is where Cage goes the most batshit (pardon the pun), throwing self-centered tantrums that have him acting more like Dr. Evil than the iconic villain.
Most are directed at the title character (Nicholas Hoult, really getting his Hugh Grant on), his long-suffering “familiar.” (A flashback sequence places them in scenes from Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula adaptation, with Cage gleefully stepping in for Bela Lugosi.) With both hiding out in New Orleans (shout-out to the late Anne Rice!), Renfield has been attending a church support group, listening to other co-dependents spill their guts about their toxic relationships. Renfield also finds these people’s tormentors, chloroforms them and drags them back to his master.
Renfield gets a burst of confidence when he saves a cop (Awkwafina, acting like a female Ken Jeong) and a club full of people from getting offed by a gang led by the sleazy son (Ben Schwartz, obviously) of the town’s big kingpin (Shohreh Aghdashloo, acting like she knows she’s better than all of this). He soon stops being at Dracula’s beck and call and starts doing things for himself, like buying sunnier clothes at Macy’s and getting a place that doesn’t reek of dead bodies.
A blood-soaked black comedy that really milks its one-joke premise, Renfield practically takes a classic movie monster (and his poor sonofabitch of a servant) and — judging from an offhand Tumblr reference — drops them in what seems like 2013. Director Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie, The Tomorrow War) and screenwriter Ryan Ridley (Rick and Morty) take the idea of Renfield breaking free and taking a big dip in Lake You (to borrow an old Dana Gould joke) and spices it up with hella-gory scenes of Renfield downing bugs and taking out baddies, John Wick-style. Much like the chocolate fondue fountain at Golden Corral, blood flows all over the place. (BTW, the story was originally pitched by famed comic-book writer/The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, back when Universal was trying to get that Dark Universe shit off the ground.)
But that’s really all Renfield has going for it. McKay and Ridley surround Cage and Hoult with a cockamamie plot and barely-written characters (most from the city’s super-corrupt police department) that aren’t missed when they meet their gruesome demise. Cage and Hoult are the only characters the filmmakers took the time to flesh out; you’re supposed to care about Awkwafina’s revenge-seeking cop, but she plays her so obnoxiously, it doesn’t land. (What the hell happened to the sensitive subtlety she displayed in The Farewell?)
While it is funny seeing Dracula’s main minion learn how to love himself again — and Dracula becoming a petty little bitch when that happens — the viscous violence, brain-dead characters, and sinister-but-shallow vibe makes Renfield the bloodiest of bloody messes.
C
“Renfield” is in theaters Friday.
