‘Renfield’ Review: Nicolas Cage Is a Stylishly Overwrought Dracula, But This Ultraviolent Vampire Action Movie is Mostly a Flip Grab Bag – Variety
In one of many many jacked-up, bodies-leaping-and-flying, vampire-meets-action-film sequences that punctuate “Renfield,” Dracula (Nicolas Cage), jutting into the film nicely earlier than we count on him to, does all of the throat-ripping injury he can in a montage that culminates in drapes being thrown open, the daylight flooding in, and the vampire, in his crimson bathrobe, bursting into flame. It appears just like the climax of many a vampire movie, and it leaves Dracula a charred husk. However has he been killed? No manner! As Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), Dracula’s self-described slave and disciple, explains to us in voice-over, when one thing like this occurs it takes a whole lot of work to return Dracula to his earlier state; it takes many victims for him to feed upon. However with sufficient blood and sufficient time, he can claw his manner again to his previous sturdy undead type.
A bit of later, Renfield, who feeds off Dracula’s powers, faces off towards some criminals in a sleazy New Orleans bar, and a hulking hitman in an executioner’s masks makes use of a knife to slash Renfield’s guts proper open. We predict that may be the top of him, however no: Renfield eats a bug, which fortifies his power, and he pops again into motion like a superhero who received momentarily knocked for a loop.
One of many many lures of the vampire style is that it operates in shut religious proximity to loss of life. However in “Renfield,” with its leaping, limb-tearing, slo-mo-and-back struggle scenes which might be like one thing out of a extra splatterific “Kick-Ass,” nothing about loss of life is especially everlasting. The blood spurts and flows — it’s a really fluid film. And the principles become fluid too. The grip of a Dracula movie was as soon as linked to the prospect of a stake being plunged by Dracula’s coronary heart (the finality of it), however in Renfield there isn’t any stake. And there’s nothing a lot at stake.
Is it enjoyable to see Nicolas Cage go full vampire for the primary time since “Vampire’s Kiss,” the low-budget 1988 indie wherein he basically launched himself because the Methodology maniac of operatic kitsch kabuki overacting? Sure, it’s. In “Vampire’s Kiss,” Cage performed a fusty New York literary agent who thought he was a vampire (the film, in its maladroit shoestring manner, anticipated the premise of “American Psycho”), however in “Renfield” he’s the complete grand article: Dracula himself, with pasty mottled pores and skin and hair slicked again and a scary row of enamel, each considered one of them a gleaming pointed fang. The make-up and costumes, like Dracula’s black velvet smoking jacket with the darkish glitter lapels, liberate Cage to offer an outlandish however layered efficiency, one that attracts on your complete hallowed historical past of big-screen Draculas.
There’s a base layer of Bela Lugosi (early on we see Cage and Hoult digitized into black-and-white photographs of Tod Browning’s timeless 1931 model), and there’s a nod, in Cage’s rictus grin, to the Lon Chaney of “London After Midnight,” in addition to an overtone of Christopher Lee’s imperiously gnashing, leering Dracula of the late ’50s and ’60s. On high of all of it is the Cage mystique. His faux-aristocratic efficiency isn’t any mere camp freakout; he sinks into the energy of Dracula — the vampire’s habit not solely to blood however to his personal megalomania, to the concept that it’s his unholy proper to dwell this fashion. However, after all, there’s a comic book aspect to the seething dynamics; Cage’s Dracula is so fast, so in thrall to his legend, that he’ll slice you with sarcasm. It’s a witty and luscious efficiency, unhinged however by no means uncontrolled, and it deserved a film that might function a pedestal for the actor’s seasoned flamboyance.
“Renfield,” although, has no thriller, no poetry, no grandeur. It’s a scattershot lark jam-packed with “concepts,” none of which completely take maintain. Renfield, embodied by Nicholas Hoult as if he have been the Hugh Grant of the ’90s taking part in a neurasthenic British pop star of the ’80s (assume Robert Smith or the members of Spandau Ballet), is launched at a 12-step assembly for folks in codependent relationships, and the movie’s overarching joke is that Dracula is an abusive narcissist whose energy over Renfield is a type of gaslighting. The 12-step scenes generate a couple of chuckles, however for the joke to have taken maintain the partnership between Dracula and Renfield wanted to be drawn with extra depth. Renfield’s complicity within the relationship is alluded to, nevertheless it’s probably not a part of the feel. He’s only a sufferer making an attempt to wriggle out of an association he’s uninterested in.
After serving to arrange Dracula’s lair (candles, pea-green fluourescent mild, hanging pints of blood) within the bowels of the Previous Charity Hospital, Renfield strikes into his personal place and offers himself a makeover — a extra conservative haircut and a sweater out of an previous Benetton business. He steps away from Dracula and turns into somewhat extra boring.
I haven’t talked about the underworld crime-family plot, which appears like one thing grafted on from one other film. That’s as a result of the director, Chris McKay, working from a script by Ryan Ridley, italicizes all the pieces in a nuance-free manner, by no means creating the natural style mash-up he’s going for. The Lobos household, led by Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo), along with her tattooed hooligan son Ted (Ben Schwartz) because the lead troublemaker, are in cahoots with the cops, however Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), a noble renegade officer, need to avenge her policeman father’s loss of life by going after them. Awkwafina provides a blunt and overstated efficiency, and the connection between Rebecca and Renfield falls into some obscure zone between romance and logistical necessity.
Hoult’s Renfield is that this shrinking violet, armed together with his self-help e-book about poisonous narcissism, however within the struggle scenes he’s a kamikaze, utilizing dripping limbs as spears, punching out heads or tearing off faces, the blood gushing up in Hawaiian Punch geysers. He’s regardless of the film wants him to be. The calculation on the core of “Renfield” is a cynical one: The filmmakers know that an motion movie shall be larger on the field workplace than one thing that’s simply an oddball Nick Cage vampire movie. However the manic violence of “Renfield,” whilst it should assist promote the film, detracts from what the film is. How will you inform the story of somebody who eases himself out of a codependent relationship with Dracula however does it by being each bit as nonchalantly homicidal as Dracula? “Renfield” is such a flip grab-bag of a film that it makes Dracula’s thirsty power-tripping look humane.
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