‘Renfield’ Review
Stars: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brandon Scott Jones, Adrian Martinez, Camille Chen, Bess Rous | Written by Ryan Ridley, Robert Kirkman | Directed by Chris McKay
Nicolas Cage has been in just about every kind of film you can think of, and he’s played just about every kind of character you can think of. One of his best, most famous, and over-the-top parts is in 1988s Vampire’s Kiss, where Nic Cage plays a publishing executive convinced he’s turning into a bloodsucking vampire. Now, more than 30 years later, not only is Nic Cage playing a vampire, he’s playing the lord of vampires, the prince of darkness, Count Dracula. It’s a role Cage seemed destined to play, after all, his uncle Francis Ford Coppola directed the 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Now Nic Cage gets to shine as that title character, and it’s a performance worthy of a better film. Unfortunately, Renfield is not the film Nicolas Cage as Count Dracula deserves, but the one he’s stuck in.
Renfield, tells the story of Dracula’s infamous servant. Played over the years by a number of great actors such as Klaus Kinski, who famously played Renfield opposite Sir Christopher Lee as Dracula. Others such as Tom Waits, and more recently Mark Gatiss have also sunk their teeth into the role. This time around Renfield is played by Nicholas Hoult, who we are introduced to from the very start as wanting to get out of the toxic relationship he has with his “boss”. We’re told this through many of the film’s voiceovers by Hoult. These voiceovers come and go in what feels like a more tame and less self-aware version of the voiceovers by Ryan Reynolds in the Deadpool movies. The level of voiceover in Renfield doesn’t bring the same charm or humour as the Deadpool ones, instead the voiceover is much more cliché. It feels like the classic freeze frame moment where the dialogue is essentially “yup thats me, you’re probably wondering how I got here”. It’s the movie meme and cliché that, like Dracula himself, won’t die. It felt like it came from a lazy script that didn’t get much better. Every dialogue scene felt laced with painful exposition, every character felt like they were just trying to get out as much information as possible, with no line that ever felt fun or interesting.
Another issue I found, was countless action set pieces. The set pieces try to do too much simultaneously and I found myself asking who this film was for. It wasn’t for horror fans, action fans, or comedy fans. It tried its hand at each, but each one felt flat and never with any substance behind it. The kills in the set pieces are made up with over-the-top blood and gore, put together with distracting CGI that takes you away from the action. It never becomes a story you care about and never gives us characters that feel real or unique, and when it’s trying to be over the top and goofy it never fully commits to that either. It wants to be too many things at the same time and never truly understands what it should be when the answer is right there. This was always meant to be an over-the-top Nic Cage Dracula movie, and it felt like Nic Cage was the only one who got that.
Every time Nic Cage was on screen Renfield suddenly came to life and the film started to believe in itself, like the film was finally becoming what it was meant to be. Unfortunately, Nic Cage is not in the film enough, and his performance as Dracula gets pushed aside. It’s a performance that hits all the right notes. It’s campy, with a sense of the old Bram Stroker Dracula, of elegance and charm, yet underneath is the cruelty and malice of a true monster. It’s a performance that deserved to be in every scene and stand toe to toe with Renfield at every moment. In the end, the performance of Cage is not enough to save the film as a whole but maybe one day it will be good enough for a second viewing.
** 2/5
Renfield is in cinemas now.
