by Jacob Kinman, Contributing Writer
There is no vampire more well-known in popular culture than the one and only Count Dracula. Since the release of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel about the infamous creature, Dracula has appeared in countless works of fiction as the epitome of bloodsucking evil. In the novel, the Count recruits an inmate from an asylum to become his familiar, or a servant who helps a vampire to feed and remain hidden from society, while also performing any and all menial tasks that need to be done to this end, named Robert Montague Renfield. He is essentially the Igor to Dracula’s Dr. Frankenstein, and is most often portrayed as a weak and dutiful character who lives in full service to his vampiric master.
After all of these adaptations of Dracula over 100 years since the novel’s release, the vampire’s lackey finally gets a place in the spotlight and is the central focus of his own story in the new film, Renfield. That’s what he’s trying for, anyways.
Directed by Chris McKay of The Lego Movie fame, this film is officially the second addition to Universal’s classic monster universe, following the 2020 release of The Invisible Man, and is also intended to be a direct sequel to the 1931 film Dracula, also released by Universal. This is a cool element of the film, as they’ve actually recreated scenes from that film to show Renfield’s backstory, reshot using Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult. The titular character in Renfield (Hoult) sets Dracula’s longtime familiar on a path to break free from his narcissistic, maniacal boss, played brilliantly by Cage, and make a life for himself.
Renfield and Dracula, after some close encounters with vampire hunters, move to New Orleans and take residence in an abandoned hospital. Renfield, as a familiar, can consume any bug and absorb its life force to obtain Dracula’s powers, a detail that comes straight from the original novel. The city happens to be run by the Lobos, a ruthless crime family who have full control of New Orleans and are even protected by their police force. Renfield regularly attends a support group for destructive, co-dependent relationships, and begins to muster up the strength to leave his master behind to try to start something new for himself. Renfield also seeks out the groups’ abusive partners and uses them to feed Dracula as he tries to find a way out of his situation. Alongside this story is a subplot about a New Orleans police officer named Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), who is trying to bring down Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz), an enforcer for the crime family.
This movie is going for a comedy-horror tone and tries to mesh them together in a coherent way that mostly lands on its feet. The gore and action are both explosive and bombastic as Renfield punches, kicks, and breaks his way through the Lobo family and the corrupt cops who protect them. The humor that’s attempted here can be hit and miss, and I found myself laughing more at the bloody parts than a lot of the jokes. I feel like the film missed an opportunity to lean into more of a What We Do In The Shadows tone and give us a bit more of Dracula’s personality. For the sake of humor, even Dracula himself could be subjected to some personality quirks. But, the humor here ends up being a bit too broad for that to work.
Something with the story is off to me as well. The plot seems to want to try to set Quincy up as Renfield’s romantic interest, but never fully commits to that. The whole subplot involving her backstory and her history with the Lobo family could have been scaled back to make way for more of Dracula and Renfield. All of the elements of the plot are pieced together just fine, but with this film being only 93 minutes, it seems like there might be some more interesting material on the cutting room floor.
The use of the co-dependency group to put the Renfield-Dracula relationship into a modern perspective ends up being very clever and makes for a lot of the humor in the film. At one point, Renfield is explicitly describing his relationship with Dracula, and the person leading the group takes it all as metaphor, which I thought was a hilarious scene. The rest of the humor is a bit silly, but does a good job keeping the tone light amongst all the blood and biting.
Cage’s portrayal of Dracula ends up being the best part about this movie. He’s doing some major scene chewing, as he does best, but still manages to stay charming, and carries the creepy and menacing vibe you would expect from the character. It is so cool to see Cage prove to the world that, even though he can be over-the-top, he’s still relevant and is willing to put himself out there. If this Universal monster universe ends up actually happening, I would love to see him show up as Dracula again. Hoult holds his own against Cage and puts in yet another solid performance to his ever-impressive resume, while Awkwafina and Schwartz bring a lot of levity to the silly tone the film finds itself in.
Renfield is a violent romp that brings some decent humor, gory fun and a fresh, contemporary twist to the classic Dracula story. It doesn’t work as well as it could, but I still had a pretty good time with it.
Score: 7/10
Renfield is currently playing in theaters
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