★★★
Director Chris McKay (The Lego Batman Movie) takes on the tale of Renfield, Count Dracula’s much-maligned daylight caretaker. The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ridley of Rick and Morty fame are behind the story, and this odd pairing makes the film a blood-filled festival of twisted fun.
Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has served Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) as his loyal familiar for around one hundred years. They’ve moved from place to place in that time, with Renfield always picking up the pieces of his master’s destructive debauchery. Now living in New Orleans, Renfield gets caught up in an assassination attempt on police officer Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina) by local crime boss Tedward Lobo (Ben Schwartz). When she calls him a hero, he feels he has self-worth for the first time in his life. But it isn’t going to be easy to break away from the hold Dracula has on him or survive the Lobo family, who now have their sights set on him, too.
Ridley and Kirkman’s script can be a little uneven sometimes, but this doesn’t mean the story isn’t entertaining. Genre mixing can be tricky, especially when using a new twist on established lore. Still, the tale holds up for the most part and starts to become something more than an outlandish gore-fest in the second act. McKay’s direction of the main cast is superb, as Hoult embodies the maligned lawyer and all his decades-old frustrations. As is usually the case, Awkwafina manages to balance her comedic and dramatic acting well. But, unsurprisingly, the show-stealer is Cage, who looks like he was born to play this role – and always knew it.
Every minute he’s on the screen, Cage embodies the Dracula persona of both Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee – with a bit of Lon Chaney’s professor from London After Midnight. But he does it with his own brand of smarmy outlandishness, and it is bloody good.
Some viewers might think the gore in the film is excessive, but it is so over the top that it plays like comedy, reminding viewers of Army of Darkness but with more gore galore. If one watches closely enough in the frantic action, body parts are put to uses never before seen on the screen. The camera work is mostly solid, but sometimes it gets too frenzied to keep up with.
Renfield is a solid film, especially for viewers who like horror comedies, more so for ones who have a skewed sense of humor. The squeamish need not attend, although they’ll miss a fantastic performance by Cage if they don’t. In addition, some new lore is added to the Dracula mystique, putting a fresh new twist on the familiar.
