Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), has been Dracula’s (Nicolas Cage) slave for many decades now as the submissive part in a pretty messed-up co-dependent abusive relationship. Well, at least he gets superpowers from eating insects, now, so I wouldn’t say Dracula never did anything for him.
Our protagonist is struggling badly with the horrors of Dracula, however, the guilt that comes with his complicity in many an outrageously bloody deed. By now, he’s at least an observing participant in a self help group for people with the less supernatural version of his relationship troubles, and feeds his peers’ abusers to his vampiric masters. In a couple of decades, Renfield might even have started on getting away from Dracula, but the vagaries of an increasingly idiotic plot drag him there rather earlier.
What’s good about Chris McKay’s Renfield is easily summed up in the words “Nicolas Cage”. His performance as this movie’s Dracula is incredible, channelling an amped up, combined version of earlier portrayals (most obviously those by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee) into the vampire as an embodiment not of some romantic bullshit, or animal magnetism, but of masculinity at its worst. There’s a sense not of actual intelligence about this version of Dracula, but some kind of violent cleverness, something so human it feels deeply inhuman even before we get to the evil vampire powers and the teeth.
Alas, this performance and the very sound and interesting basic idea are completely wasted in a movie that really rather would like to be some godawful noisy action comedy with random bouts of gore. Everything that could be thoughtful and clever is buried under reams of bad and obvious jokes and mediocre action sequences that are not improved a wit by being obnoxiously loud.
It’s just a waste, as is Awkwafina’s walking, talking plot device of a character or the usually dependable Nicholas Hoult who just looks bored and confused most of the time.
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