Renfield, directed by Chris McKay, puts a unique spin on the story of Dracula, played by Nicolas Cage. Showing us the perspective of Dracula’s servant, or familiar, Robert Montague Renfield, played by Nicholas Hoult, is an idea that lends itself to comedy so well. Seeing Nicolas Cage in trailers as a comedic, cheesy (in a good way) rendition of Dracula was all I needed to be all in on this movie. Then seeing Awkwafina as a possible romantic interest for Nicholas Hoult two seconds later was all I needed to expect a mediocre movie that would hopefully allow Nicolas Cage to go “full Cage” as Dracula. That’s about what we got here.
As much as I was expecting a mediocre movie, I was, perhaps foolishly, still slightly optimistic that the trailer was just poorly made and wasn’t a good representation of the full product. I wanted nothing more than to have this be a hammy masterpiece with Nicolas Cage leading the way. Cage did not disappoint whatsoever Say what you will about him “overacting” in other roles, but I don’t know that it was possible for him to do that in this film. The more played up he went with this one, the better it would’ve been. Thankfully, regardless of what I think of other portions of the movie, I will rewatch this numerous times just to hear Cage exclaim, “Doug is trash!” among other gut busting line deliveries.
I may make it sound like Dracula is the only reason worth watching this, but there are other things I enjoyed throughout the runtime. Nicholas Hoult is great for most of Renfield, although he’s extremely lackluster in all of the romantic portions with Awkwafina, as she is as well. The support group was funny at times, especially the group leader. Ben Schwartz is always hilarious, despite the writers giving him some not-so-great lines to work with occasionally. The greatest thing after Cage, though, are the fight scenes. They do an incredible job with the fight choreography, making the lead up to a fight scene exciting, and most of all, making them creative.
It felt as though the Hoult and Awkwafina was so awkward in their romantic scenes because they really shouldn’t have been love interests whatsoever. The start to them being interested in each other romantically is so unfounded. If they were friends and nothing else, it wouldn’t have saved the movie, but it would’ve made it significantly better. It feels so forced just for the sake of giving the audience a couple to root for unnecessarily. I think we’re sort of moving past the stage of forcing every movie to have a romantic plot, but we aren’t quite there yet, and this movie is a prime example.
The main negative in Renfield, aside from the needless love storyline, is the writing. It’s not consistently horrible, it’s actually very funny at times, but there are too many embarrassingly corny lines to call it a positive. The support group was a good idea on paper, and did work at first, but they approached it with too much sentimentality towards the end of the movie. One of Renfield’s lines towards the end of the movie was simply too hackneyed to put into words. It maybe would have been better if they didn’t take the line so seriously, but they clearly did.
Final Thoughts
This really could’ve been one of the funniest, most entertaining movies of the year if they went in a slightly different direction. Instead, we got Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult hamming it up in an environment that, frankly, wastes their performances on a movie full of stereotypes and clichés. I would recommend this move to everyone, but only for Dracula, Renfield, and the fights. Hopefully you get something out of it other than that, but I would be less than surprised if you didn’t.
