‘Renfield’ review: Nicolas Cage’s Dracula is toxic and Nicholas Hoult is slippin’ under

Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) is having a tough time. He was lured by the immortal vampire Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) into being his familiar over a century ago, given access to Dracula’s supernatural strength by eating bugs in exchange for an immortal lifetime of servitude. Now holed up in an abandoned old hospital nursing his master back to full health after almost being destroyed by some Catholic priests, Renfield spends his days looking for victims to feed to the Count. He mostly finds them by going to a support group for people in abusive relationships and going after the group members’ evil significant others. But their blood is not good enough for the vainglorious Dracula, who demands the blood of innocents – he suggests some nuns or a busful of cheerleaders. Renfield instead ends up saving the life of some innocents, including cop Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), from the notorious Lobo gang. When Quincy calls him a hero, something changes inside Renfield. Can he learn to love himself enough to finally get out from under Dracula’s pointed teeth for good? Or will Dracula rise to full power with the aid of the Lobos, casting the world into an age of darkness?

Renfield, written by Ryan Ridley from an original idea by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, is a great concept that needed a better script than this. The toxic relationship angle is a fresh one through which to tell the Dracula story, and one that is rife with possibilities to humorously turn the story’s characters and tropes on their heads. Unfortunately, the subplot with the Lobo gang takes up far too much time, turning a satirical update to the Dracula story that’s almost a twisted romantic comedy into an ultra-violent police flick with an all-too-normal quasi-romance for long stretches. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, given that the action sequences in that police flick include some of the goriest, most clever kills ever seen in a mainstream Hollywood film. However, the potent black humor of the action sequences is significantly less potent elsewhere. While they’re both incredibly talented, incredibly funny actors, Hoult and Awkwafina have little chemistry with each other. Each of them are locked into their own performance style, and instead of giving the film a spark, the friction between them only slows the film down, which is deadly for light comedies like this. It’s not all their fault, though, as the dialogue is generic and often cheesy in a bad way. Even the magnetic Shohreh Aghdashloo, as the head of the Lobo crime family, struggles to bring life to her lines.

Perhaps it’s unfair to all the other performers, though, because not only does Dracula get to gnash on the film’s best lines, he also gets perhaps the most perfect person alive to play him. Nicolas Cage may not have been born to play Dracula exactly, but he has such a deep love of older acting styles and reverence for Hollywood history that he feels like he was. Cage is an actor who can effortlessly call back to Old Hollywood acting styles while still adding his own unique twist, and given how much Renfield calls back to Tod Browning’s original film version and Bela Lugosi’s iconic take on the character within it, that’s a necessary quality. Cage is the film’s saving grace, having the time of his life chewing the scenery in his uniquely committed way. Aided by some fantastic makeup effects, he goes full-bore into the character, widening his smile to show off his rotted knives of teeth and mugging for the camera as though his life depended on it. The vocal work is exemplary as always, but it’s been a while since the actor has pulled faces this much, and it’s such fun to watch. Cage’s Dracula is delectably demented, bugging his eyes wide and swanning about in luxurious suits drinking blood from martini glasses. It’s a master class in camp, Exhibit A for how to take a scene-stealer of a role and blow everyone else off the screen with it. Whenever he’s on screen Renfield is a deranged delight, but whenever he’s not, it mostly sags.

It’s really a pity, because Renfield had all the potential in the world. The problem is that it still does, and it’s in its final form. Throughout its relatively slim running time, the film has many moments in which the sun shines through and sets everything ablaze, but for most of it, the film just lies there as the blood slowly drains away. For all its inventive goriness (the audience reactions to the violence are enough to recommend a trip to the cinema if you have any interest in this at all), aggressive editing/camerawork (those action sequences are all-out assaults on the senses), and clever repositioning of a classic story (if you’re going to reboot a decades-old franchise, a fresh spin/new angle is much preferable to a straightforward retelling), Renfield trips up on the most basic part of making a comedy: The jokes just aren’t fully there. When you have such a perfect marriage of actor and role as you have with Nicolas Cage here, you can overcome that, but try as it might, Renfield just never fully comes to life.

Grade: C+

Universal Pictures will release Renfield only in theaters on April 14.

Photo: Michele K. Short/Universal Pictures