Renfield

In cinemas now

There have been many on-screen iterations of Bram Stoker’s vampiric antagonist, all of which have oscillated wildly in quality. From Bela Lugosi’s iconic turn in 1931 to Gary Oldman’s utterly bizarre performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s almost pornographic 1992 adaptation, several actors have made for a standout Dracula.

The idea of Nicolas Cage donning said blood-swilling villain’s cape is therefore resplendent with bat-shit crazy possibilities, particularly given that he is hot off the heels of one of his best performances in years in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Sadly, Chris McKay’s Renfield falls someway short of tapping into that potential.

McKay and screenwriter Ryan Ridley’s decision to centre their film on Dracula’s titular servant is a pleasingly left-field decision, and Nicholas Hoult delivers a game and surprisingly action-packed performance in that role. Alas, Renfield undoubtedly suffers due to its bizarre decision to limit much of Cage’s screen-time to a series of scene-stealing but frustratingly interspersed interactions with the film’s other central characters.

Given that Ridley’s screenplay frequently claims to be concerned with co-dependant relationships, this is an odd creative choice that leaves the film feeling uneven. Hoult’s Renfield professes to be at loggerheads with Dracula, but he spends most of his time either attending survivor’s groups, offing Ben Schwartz’s laughably disposable henchman, or attempting to woo Awkwafina’s hardened cop.

All of this is made more problematic by the nagging suspicion that McKay is attempting to make a film in a similar vein to Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows (and its successful spin-off series), something which burdens Renfield with an inferiority complex that it never quite manages to shake off.