‘Renfield’ Review #2
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
I may be ready to give up on Nic Cage after this movie if I’m honest. Actually, that may be a tad harsh because I do feel like he is doing his best with the half-baked mindless script he was given. Cage as Dracula alone was the selling point of Renfield and as I would come to find out, Cage is not even in the damn film all that much!
I realise that I’m not exactly burying the lead here in terms of how I felt about Renfield but don’t worry because it’s not all bad. Let’s jump into it….
Renfield is not exactly reinventing the wheel here in as much as the story revolves around the usual pairing of Dracula (Nic Cage) and his Servant/Familiar/Henchman/Bitch Renfield (Nicholas Hoult). After decades of servitude to his “master” Renfield has decided that he has had enough of the constant moving, killing and depravity that has become his new normal. He seeks help to break away from his co-dependency to Dracula via self-help groups. It’s not long before he finds himself in the middle of a gang turf war and Sonic the Hedgehog (Ben Schwartz) wants to kill his ass.
Renfield strikes up a somewhat unlikely friendship with local Police Officer Rebecca (Awkwafina) as they semi kind of sort of team up to help each other out in their respective plights. There is a pretty irrelevant subplot including Rebecca’s dad that I kind of lost interest in. So yeah that’s your Renfield movie.
Cast-wise, Renfield is a mixed bag for sure. There are a few roles you might think Cage could absolutely smash and honestly Dracula feels like one of them. He has the look down and when he goes “full Cage” well I just about believe he could convince me he is Jesus. Having said all that, there is just not enough of the character here for me to see his best work.
Someone we do see a lot of is the titular Renfield (Nicholas Hoult). An actor I have enjoyed seeing grow over the years with films like About a Boy, moving into the TV show Skins, and then blowing up in the X-Men franchise. He is very much carrying the movie and doing an adequate job. Now I say adequate because again much like Cage, the material he is working with is just not great.
I’m going to gloss past Awkwafina because for me she is one of those actresses who is just kind of ‘there’. I rarely feel any kind of way about her roles. Ben Schwartz though, off the heels of the Sonic movies absolutely got the memo and understood what was being asked of him. Hamming it up to the maximum and honestly, kinda ends up stealing the movie.
Director Adam McKay is best known for his work on The Lego Batman Movie and the Chris Pratt film The Tomorrow War. Renfield is definitely a step up in terms of finding his style. The movie does have this almost noir look but is set up with a modern world feel, complete with a grunge neon tinge. The VFX at times during the gore-filled kills are just wonderful to see, as they should be. That brings me neatly to the story and oh my god does Renfield think it’s a much smarter movie than it truly is. I actually liked what it was going for with the toxic working relationship co-dependant angle but I was bored to tears by it after they had attached it to another brick so they could smash me over the head with their ‘MESSAGE’.
All in all, Renfield isn’t a horrendous movie it just lacks any kind of meaningful content and definitely lacks enough Nic Cage. This has been a role the man has been chasing for years and when he gets it, they squander it. Watch it if you want, it’s passable.
