Nicolas Cage as Dracula. That’s all Renfield had to do to make the internet instantly fall in love. How could we not? Cage was iconically wild as a yuppie gone feral in 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss. Then came those sensational set photos of Cage, painted pale and dripping in head-to-toe blood-red velvet. The first trailer, which offered a glimpse of the Oscar winner in action, inspired our thirst for his undead villain. Like the submissive servant the movie is named for, we were all ready to bow down to Renfield‘s Dracula. But could Cage deliver a performance that lives up to our sky-high expectations? Could our hopes be too grand? The answers are yes…and yes.
Cage is exactly what we wish for in Renfield, bringing the horror comedy to intoxicating heights of hilarity and strangeness. Yet the movie itself is cloyingly mediocre.
Nicolas Cage is magnificent as a madcap Dracula.
Credit: Universal Pictures
Set in modern-day New Orleans, Renfield finds the iconic vampire in an abandoned hospital, where he’s recuperating from his last battle with religious do-gooders. This Dracula is less a man or monster than a sloppy pile of rotting flesh and exposed sinew wearing a fanged grin. Yet behind these grisly prosthetics, Cage glistens with the unhinged energy that’s made him one of cinema’s most compelling leading men for 40 years and counting.
As his monster heals, the prosthetics become less aggressive, and Cage becomes suaver in a way all his own. In flashbacks, Cage strides in the footsteps of Bela Lugosi, gamely re-enacting sequence from Universal’s 1931 Dracula and adding an extra oomph to classic lines like “I never drink…wine.” Later, while scolding his disobedient servant, he’ll swirl a martini glass filled with blood and topped with eyeballs in place of olives. He’ll waggle his eyebrows cartoonishly to get his point across. He’ll extend his clawed fingers in threat and with grandeur. Cage will make a punchline out of any dialogue just through the zest of his delivery. There’s delicious delirium found in a classic Cage injection of an “ah“ or a “whoo” mid-way through a line. Renfield is the better for every instance.
The trouble is, when Cage isn’t on screen, the movie suffers.
Renfield sidelines Dracula for a wonky romance.
Credit: Universal Pictures
Plucked from Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic novel, Renfield’s origin story is the same as it ever was: An English businessman twisted by greed becomes the familiar of a vampire, forced to eat bugs to scratch out a scrubby version of eternal life. However, in the hands of screenwriters Ryan Ridley (Rick & Morty) and Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), Renfield’s bug-eating is explicitly a power-up that gives him super strength, like a cockroach-popping Popeye.
He’s supposed to use this power to aid his master in draining the blood of the innocent, who apparently taste better than drug dealers and abusive boyfriends. (“Trash,” the count spits, after sucking from a dead man’s dismembered finger.) However, Renfield has grown tired of this toxic relationship and yearns for a “normal” life. So, naturally, he falls in love with a woman who just so happens to be a cop on a mission to take down a super vicious crime family, the Lobos, whose bloodlust might match Dracula’s.
The love story between Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) and Officer Rebecca (Awkwafina) is annoyingly half-hearted. Holt and Awkwafina have zero chemistry. She is shackled in the one-note archetype of good cop hellbent on revenge and so gets stuck in a permanent scowl, whether facing down foes or a socially awkward Renfield in a hideous pastel sweater. (That’s this movie’s idea of a visual joke. It’s…fine, but really funny.) Hoult is similarly wasted in a thankless role that’s mostly comprised of staring and yearning. Though Renfield is the protagonist of this movie, he’s about as engaging as boiled chicken, and he gets about as many punchlines.
As a comedic performer, Hoult is at his best playing a glorious brat (The Favourite) or a savage himbo (The Great). Robbed of the splendor of ruthless arrogance, he’s left with little but one-sided longing and dialogue that repeatedly speaks aloud the themes of the movie. As if the audience could possibly miss them among countless group therapy sessions, where words like co-dependency and narcissism are offered more readily than bad coffee! This concept might have worked as a comic or a 22-minute cartoon for adults, where leaning as hard as Renfield does on voiceover wouldn’t feel like such a crutch. But as a feature, it’s overwhelmingly uneven.
Who can match Nicolas Cage in Renfield?
Credit: Universal Pictures
Hoult and Awkwafina may be trapped in bland hero roles, but the supporting cast makes a meal out of playing allies and baddies. Academy Award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo is an unexpected but inspired pick as Bellafrancesca Lobo, the matriarch of the aforementioned crime family. Adorned in impeccable white suits, she swaggers with an elegance and fearlessness that instantly communicates she is untouchable, having paid off every cop with any power in this dirty city. When she and Dracula finally meet, there is the chemistry the main love story is so sorely lacking. It’s so hot you might well get distracted.
On Renfield’s side, the group therapy leader proves a solidly outrageous source of laughs thanks to Ghosts‘ Brandon Scott Jones. Swiftly swerving from therapy prattle to an incredulous outburst, he proves a silly yet solid tie, connecting the world of “normal” humans to the blood-drenched hell of Renfield’s night-to-night.
When it comes to killer comedy though, the only player who can match Cage’s energy and exhilarating spontaneity is Ben Schwartz. First breaking through as the outrageous idiot Jean-Ralphio in Parks and Recreation, Schwartz has tirelessly been building a career popping in to play hyperactive goofballs of every variety, be they thrill-seeking fowl (DuckTales), a super-speedy mammal (Sonic the Hedgehog), or a musical-obsessed Machiavellian (The Afterparty). In Renfield, Schwartz is perfectly cast as Tedward (aka Teddy) Lobo, the cocky nepo baby who has plenty of pull but no chill.
Schwartz’s signature enthusiasm instantly clashes with Teddy’s look, which includes slicked-back hair and a cloak of tattoos from his wrists to his jugular. From the first time he opens his motor-mouth, it’s clear Teddy is a pretender, which is confirmed when his panic pushes him to chuck a brick of cocaine at a pursuing officer’s face. (Shout out to Adrian Martinez, who makes “COCAINE!” a laugh-ripping line.)
When Teddy comes face to face with Cage’s Dracula, Renfield finally reaches the dizzying heights of weirdness we’d been promised. Here are two performers who are known for a wild vibe; they couldn’t play predictable if they tried. Together, Schwartz and Cage are sensational, and may well be worth the ticket price on their own.
Renfield is bogged down by too many ideas.
Credit: Universal Pictures
If this were a low-budget midnight movie, a cluttered concept might be overlooked for clever execution. Director Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie, The Tomorrow War) doesn’t offer that. With a studio budget, he does deliver a satisfying array of midnight movie mayhem, including graphic violence, gruesome practical effects, and ludicrous fight moves, like Renfield full-on pulling a dude’s arms off his torso.
There’s fun in this outlandishness, but I yearned for more glop and grossness, something more daring. Dare I say darker? The frights of all this are too tempered by daytime lighting, the comedic tone, and bright red blood. This is essentially a live-action cartoon, so we’re not meant to dwell on the violence or trauma or emotions. Even Renfield is swift to leap from bug-eating and grousing to grinning and forgetting the family he left behind to dedicate himself to a velvet-clad bloodsucker. Without that, the film lacks – pardon the pun — stakes. There’s too much plot for dwelling, amid Renfield‘s heavy-handed metaphor of its central couple being horror’s founding bad romance. However, Cage has wicked fun with the role of spurned ex, and it’s easy to adore him for it.
Perhaps part of the problem with Renfield is that What We Do In The Shadows has already explored this terrain at length for four seasons and counting. It’s not a surprise that Hoult’s Renfield feels sparsely realized compared to the complexity Harvey Guillén has brought to his similarly frustrated familiar. Out of the crypt, Renfield already feels been there, done that with its central conceit. While some stellar performers bring sparkle to the shabby script, not even Nic Cage can rescue Renfield from its uninspired excesses. Still, he’s such bloody fun in this that who could be blamed for taking a bite all the same?
Renfield opens in theaters April 14.
