THIS REVIEW OF RENFIELD IS SPOILER-FREE.
by Jarrod Jones. Renfield is the latest in an increasingly serpentine queue of comedy-horror movies that think being hilarious is more fun than being scary and winds up being neither. It confuses mayhem with frights and does that thing modern comedies do where its cast never shuts up except when they do something gross or rude. Sometimes not even then. In terms of tone, it’s so directionless that Renfield almost — almost — makes you yearn for the days when Universal was seriously trying to get its Marvel-style Dark Universe off the ground. (Hey, I said “almost.”)
Worse, Renfield doesn’t seem at all perturbed that it leaves its marquee ace-in-the-hole Nicolas Cage wandering around its margins as Dracula, king of movie vampires. Cage is mightily effective as the legendary blood-hound and, in its precious few good moments, he’s also spooky. His pointy dental prosthetics make him look like a shark who’s come to land and learned to swing a cane. And, in fine Cage fashion, he plays the role completely straight, paradoxically making everyone else look like stock cartoon characters. If only we didn’t have to wade through a movie’s-worth of unfunny shit to enjoy him.
When you say it out loud, the premise of Renfield isn’t half bad: RM Renfield, Dracula’s tormented familiar, realizes that — gasp! — his relationship with the fiend is toxic and seeks the inner strength to leave his master once and for all. Nicholas Hoult stars as the same lowly vampire servant played by Dwight Frye in Universal’s 1931 version of Dracula, and it has been suggested that this is a sequel to that movie. To its credit, Renfield has a bit of fun recreating a couple of that film’s more iconic shots with Cage and Hoult. Still, apologies to Tod Browning.
If only it had zeroed in on its premise instead of doing at least three more things beyond it. Instead, Renfield grafts on an action-heavy aspect that involves a New Orleans crime family headed by kingpin Shohreh Aghdashloo and a shitheel nepo-underboss played by Ben Schwartz. Their grip on the city, as well as its corrupt police force, has wrecked the life of a cop played by a painfully miscast Awkwafina. Somehow, all this crud manages to have something to do with Renfield, the bugs he chomps on to give him superpowers, and Dracula. Action-comedy-horror-drama. Sounds more like a Frankenstein to me.
As Renfield works through his problems with a codependency self-help group — easily the better part of the movie — Hoult and Awkwafina team up. Their chemistry, to risk a dopey pun, sucks, though it’s nothing compared to the film’s story, which soon starts suggesting that it might explore things like world domination and other franchisable hokum. You get the impression that it was written by a comic book writer.
The thing is, Renfield comes from one of the comic book industry’s most successful writers, Robert Kirkman, co-creator of franchises like The Walking Dead and Invincible. Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment is branching out into the broader world of film, and, like another certain comic-cinema outfit I could mention, it’s hitching its brand, at least for now, to the success of Rick and Morty; series writer Ryan Ridley wrote the script based on Kirkman’s pitch.
So the film’s director, Chris McKay, attempts to tap into the shock gags of Rick and Morty while bringing some of his five-jokes-per-minute energy from The Lego Batman Movie to this ha-ha horror. It’s a chaotic approach that sinks almost everything worthwhile about it. Yet, some of the few inspired details in Renfield, like how Dracula keeps a vast array of hospital blood packs tubed up to his creepy throne, manage to rise above the noise.
McKay’s visual approach, much like the rest of his movie, is a mess; Renfield‘s pastel-infused, faux-Fight Club aesthetic looks like a chaotic fusion of Bo Welch and The CW. His slapdash approach to action sequences is even more outrageous, somehow, with severed bodies shooting out digitized blood so bloppy and absurd they look like geysers of ketchup. It’s enough to put any self-respecting bloodsucker off the sauce for good.
3.5 out of 10
Renfield is in theaters now.
Directed by Chris McKay.
Screenplay by Ryan Ridley.
Story by Robert Kirkman.
Produced by Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Bryan Furst, Sean Furst, and Chris McKay.
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, Adrian Martinez, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Nicolas Cage.
Rated R for random barks of ‘fuck’ and somewhat frequent bits of cartoon dismemberment.
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