Renfield Movie Review: Draws equal amounts of blood and laughter from a quirky premise

Who among us doesn't have a ready list of grievances against our bosses? But Renfield has us all beat, for his boss is the prince of darkness, the king of vampires, Count Dracula himself. Serving Dracula for over half a millennium, Renfield is disgruntled with the relationship with his immortal master, which he rightly identifies as a toxic relationship. And he deals with it like any employee would: by smiling around his boss while sneaking away to an anonymous support group to vent his frustrations. The story then unfolds by setting up this premise in a way that piques your interest and sustains it for a surprising length of the film.

Director: Chris McKay
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz

At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to the origins of Renfield’s relationship with Dracula through a black-and-white montage that pays a wonderful homage to classic Bela Lugosi Dracula films. This is just one of the many examples of how the film tastefully draws from the compendium of original elements that the Dracula story has accrued over the decades. The film handles everything Dracula with an almost reverential glee, topped off by Nicholas Cage’s performance, which is sufficiently imbued with the eccentricities unique to Cage.

Arguably, horror comedy is one of the most toughest genres to navigate because it demands you oscillate between two genres that fall on opposite ends of the spectrum, and you have to do that with equal amounts of respect to both genres or let it fall apart into a bungled mess. Renfield strikes the balance by treating elements endemic to both genres with enough respect. There are enough chuckle-worthy moments interspersed with copious amounts of blood and gore. Moments of dread are not hastily cut with awkward self-referential humour but are handled with sincerity. The film lets you enjoy moments like when Renfield rips off the limbs of an henchman and then uses the severed limbs to beat oncoming assaulters. At such moments, the film is in no hurry to shoe in a punchline, it instead knows that the scene is ridiculous on its own so it quietly lets us enjoy the absurdity of the over-the-topness. 

Awkwafina plays police officer Quincy, who is impatient to bring the Mafia down for murdering her father. The romantic spark between Quincy and Renfield, while establishing an interesting dynamic, is never fully explored. Her story arc with the Mafia brings much-needed momentum when it clashes with the arc of Renfield and Dracula, but it stops short of supplying the bare essentials to the story. Quincy’s character motivations and her relationship with her sister are some of the weakest links in the screenplay. Awkwafina and every character she pulls into the story, with their unidimensional characteristics and uninspired character motivations, feel like the part of an automobile with no outer casing, we can see why they are there but they end up exposing the machinations to outside elements and thereby weakening them. 

With a more focused storytelling, Renfield could have been a much better cinematic experience but what it offers is nothing short of a fun, enjoyable ride. At its heart, Renfield is about finding the courage to stand up for oneself. No matter how strong you are, you can still feel weak in front of people you have surrendered your power to. And when you find the courage to look for help, you will find the right kind of people who rekindle your hope. The film never loses sight of its primary themes while also having a macroscopic hold on its genre and the expectations that come with it. Starting off strong, the film nevertheless squanders its potential towards the end by using not one but many plot conveniences like Quincy's sister being an FBI agent, cocaine being a competent vampire deterrent, Teddy Lobo’s sudden realisation that he has become a Dracula’s slave, and the support group being brought back to life in an abrupt fashion. 

Films like Renfield—with a simple structure, earnest approach, whimsy, and charm—win us over to such an extent in the beginning that we willingly lean into our biases and forgive them for a weak ending.