Written by: Ryan Ridley
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brandon Scott Jones
Rating: [2/5]
When working a new job, one must contend with the reality of needing to succumb to the work-related demands of one’s boss. It thus leaves you at the mercy of your boss’s demeanor, and it’s hard to think of any other with stranger demands than the one we follow in Renfield where we see this poor fellow working for the Count himself, Dracula.
Living an immortal life thanks to the powers given to him by his boss, Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) must do all the dirty work in collecting the bodies Dracula (Nicolas Cage) will drain blood and consume. Fed up with these endless demands, Renfield sees an opportunity to get out of this arrangement, which coincides with the police investigation led by Rebecca (Awkwafina), who wants to take down the infamous Lobo crime family.
Right from the trailer, Renfield sought to deliver something wholly unique in telling a Dracula story. With this ancient creature in the public domain, many have taken opportunities to tell different tales, consisting of interpretations that stand out from the rest. Telling this particular one through the lens of the sidekick, Renfield, to display the horror of having this vampire as his boss sets up some high potential for some comedy. While this film certainly has those particularly fun elements, it completely falls apart the more it works into its plot, making for a wholly disappointing film.
Everything happening with the relationship between Renfield and Dracula works for the most part, especially with Nicolas Cage’s performance as the Count. Just stating Cage would give a performance as Dracula lets us know we’re in for something wacky and zany, which certainly proved to be the case with what we receive here. Cage goes all in on the wackiness of this character, making for every instance where he appears on screen something to look forward to. Having this in correlation with Renfield’s journey of recognizing his worth and having the strength to stand up for himself, a concept that has some potential that gets somewhat fulfilled in the story. However, we get this subplot of a crime family and the cop trying to take them down, and it stifles all the momentum.
Nothing about this particular subplot works, and it only leaves us with less time to spend with Dracula, as it falls into the typical trappings of a crime story that has nothing particularly interesting to illustrate for us. It does give Ben Schwartz an opportunity with his portrayal of Tedward Lobo, who does just fine in his portrayal but the material he receives in order to deliver on this subplot just leaves for a wholly uninteresting story to follow to the point where its methods in fully integrating Dracula cannot save from its mediocrity. Adding in Awkwafina’s character into the story brings in this bland character that works through this particularly generic storyline as a police officer that’s meant to create the clash between the present and something ancient when she teams up with Renfield, but her side of the narrative does nothing to positively contribute to the other.
Then we have the violence on display in the feature where the visual effects used, especially in the animation of the blood, moves from enjoyably silly to quickly quite lackluster. The filmmakers certainly made a choice in how they sought to present it, and the particular overuse of it takes away from the impact and makes these particular action sequences devoid of any weight after a certain amount of time.
Containing plenty of potential fun with its premise and the fantastic decision to bring in Nicolas Cage to portray Dracula delivers some fun moments, but ultimately fails to make any sort of impression. Instead, we go on this story that runs out of steam very quickly and leaves audiences grasping at straws in order to receive any level of enjoyment meant to be had here. Ultimately this stems from the lack of cohesively bringing together Renfield and Dracula into the modern world and having an additional antagonist in the Lobo crime family that simply do nothing to impress and only hamper the overall narrative and waste the work we get from Nicolas Cage as the immortal and quite hilarious Count.
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