Nic Cage is a vampire! Nic Cage is a vampire!
Renfield stars Nicolas Cage as Count Dracula, a role that he was perhaps born to play as it gives him all the necessary ingredients to go as over-the-top as possible.
I must admit that I enjoyed this movie; it succeeds where it really shouldn’t. It has many of the typical elements we expect in a horror comedy: Extreme doses of gore, a devilishly dark sense of humor, and a likable cast with little restraint.
Most importantly, it’s just plain fun.
The movie opens with footage from the 1931 Bela Lugosi classic only the heads and faces of Lugosi and Dwight Frye are replaced by Cage and Nicholas Hoult, who plays Renfield.
After Dracula is killed, he’s reconstructed and decides to resurrect Renfield and have him continue on as his servant.
Renfield exists in the present in New Orleans and resorts to eating bugs that give him superhuman strength. He’s joined a self-help group that he hopes will eliminate his toxic relationship with Dracula. Nevertheless, he still reluctantly works as Dracula’s minion, trying to feed him the blood of innocent souls so he can fully regenerate.
Awkwafina costars as a cop who wants to wipe out crime in New Orleans. She comes face to face with Renfield after he helps her gruesomely attack a gang of criminals. She’s highly impressed with his skills, and he thinks he might’ve found love. The two have some decent chemistry, even with crazy scenes such as the attack and Renfield trying to explain his supernatural abilities.
Ben Schwartz is a mob enforcer who wants to take out both Renfield and the cop, and it just so happens his plan coincides with Dracula’s ambitions.
In terms of style, story, and tone, Renfield often feels like a Tim Burton movie pumped with steroids. The gore factor is comically absurd to the point where we laugh at the mess and then catch ourselves laughing again at the creativity.
Cage does a fine job as the Dark One, fully committed in a way that balances a creepy/funny performance. His role is just as ludicrously entertaining as it was in Vampire’s Kiss. The makeup, the costume, and the accent that is ultimately meant to be an imitation of Lugosi’s are fully suited to accommodate Cage’s well-known quirks. Hoult does a great job at playing that same level of camp, but he also adds a layer to a character that could’ve relied on simply being one-dimensional. Awkwafina delivers her typical performance with a great degree of charm and relative ease.
Renfield could be seen by some as just being a jumble of stuff rather than having an actual plot, but so many elements worked for me, and I had a great time. Unlike Dracula, this film doesn’t suck.
Grade: B+
(Rated R for bloody violence, some gore, language throughout and some drug use.)
