'Renfield' review: You can’t Cage this magnificent Dracula, despite uneven plot

You know there's going to be a lot at stake whenever Dracula shows up. — UIP Malaysia

Renfield

Director: Chris McKay

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, with Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, Adrian Martinez, and Shohreh Aghdashloo

Robert Montague Renfield has a problem. He has no friends or love life, spends his free time listening to sob stories at a co-dependency group, and has to eat bugs for a literal power trip. Oh, and he also works for the one and only Count Dracula, an employer who, well, sucks.

After yet another run-in with vampire hunters and a burst of sunlight that leaves Dracula (Nicolas Cage) burnt, weak, and diminished, he is forced to relocate to New Orleans. There, Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has to seek out innocent victims for his master to feast upon, so he can regain his full powers once more.

But Renfield has other ideas. Tired of being constantly on the run, he decides to try to do some good by only bringing Dracula bad guys to eat.

But that, along with a run in with incorruptible traffic cop Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), also puts him on the radar of the Lobos crime family, led by matriarch Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her bumbling son Ted (Ben Schwartz).

And that’s all BEFORE Dracula finds out that his servant isn’t serving him very well.

Hey Renfield, do you know a dentist who can help me file my fangs?

Hoult may play the titular character in this movie, but of the two Nicks in it, Cage is the one who shines the brightest as the Master of Darkness.

Outrageously campy yet convincingly chilling, Cage looks as though he is having the time of his life, playing Dracula with an unrestrained, over-the-top, flamboyant flair; his bug-eyed stare and fangsome grin chewing up every scene he appears in, demanding your full attention and draining the lifeblood from everything else, until there is nothing left standing but the magnificence of a fully-Caged Dracula.

However, Cage aside, the whole thing is a bit of a mess. In theory, focusing the story on Renfield actually gives the old Dracula tale a bit of fresh air. Unfortunately, that whiff of fresh air also smells a lot like spilled guts, decapitated heads, and blood. Lots of blood.

The vampire dance-off was quite the lively affair.

Director Chris McKay really piles on the gore here, and though the showers of blood being comically spilled is mildly amusing to watch at first, it soon gets tiresome and repetitive.

While Hoult does his best with a somewhat limited script, it says a lot about his character that at times you wish Dracula would just put him out of his misery once and for all.

On one hand, Renfield just wants to get away from all the killing he has to do for his master.

But on the other hand, the homicidal way he goes about eliminating his enemies (at one point he rips the arms off one lackey and uses them as clubs to bludgeon people) is completely at odds with the sympathetic victim he is supposed to be.

I said, put the bunny back in the coffin.

The unevenness of his character, combined with Awkwafina doing her usual Awkwafina schtick, drags down the movie somewhat.

It’s a shame, because this could have been a fabulous showcase for Cage’s Dracula, but it’s lost underneath all the unnecessarily gratuitous gore and the unfocused script.

Overall, Renfield could have done with a bit more focus and a better script, but at least Cage is there to make sure it doesn’t totally suck.