Renfield review – gory fun as Nicolas Cage gets his teeth into Dracula – The Guardian
The 1988 film Vampire’s Kiss, a couple of lonely lothario with delusions of vampirism, may need flopped on the field workplace, nevertheless it did assist to determine Nicolas Cage’s idiosyncratic efficiency model. Inevitably, he’s now introduced his eye-popping instincts and shouty charisma to the function of Rely Dracula – with most pleasing outcomes.
Cage’s Dracula doesn’t have prime billing right here, nonetheless; that goes to his longtime servant, performed as a meek-but-mighty Englishman by Nicholas Hoult. On this telling, Renfield’s bug-eating is the supply of his super-strength, not a mark of insanity, and he needs out of what he sees as an abusive relationship together with his over-demanding boss. However breaking free is sophisticated by a blossoming romance with Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), a New Orleans cop decided to convey an area crime household to justice.
On this means, Renfield effectively sucks solely the very best and bloodiest lore from many years of Hollywood monster motion pictures. A black-and-white preamble, within the stye of Bela Lugosi’s Thirties heyday, properly units up the master-servant relationship, whereas the entire “lifeforce-draining monster” metaphor is comically reinvented for Renfield’s remedy assist group for victims of narcissistic personalities. (So very What We Do within the Shadows.)
As you’d anticipate from a film originated by Robert Kirkman of The Strolling Lifeless zombie franchise, Renfield can also be resplendent in gore. Dracula’s grotesque visage – decaying in reverse as he gathers power – is a prosthetics triumph, and in a single combat scene our hero rips an opponent’s arms from his torso, then makes use of the severed limbs as golf equipment to batter his subsequent sufferer. Cool!
This can be all good clear comedy-horror enjoyable, however extra unintentionally stomach-turning is Renfield’s carefree depiction of gun violence, in a interval when real-life US capturing deaths are hovering. Gun massacres are nice right here, however snogging? Not a lot. In actual fact, Renfield is so coy that romantic leads Awkwafina and Hoult barely even maintain fingers. “Don’t make it a sexual factor,” is Dracula’s prim instruction, after requesting a busload of cheerleaders to feast on, and, as common, Renfield meekly complies.
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