How do you return to and make relevant a story more than a century old that is familiar to all horror fans? In this case, focus on a secondary character and make him the protagonist, allowing the audience to view the well-known character through a new perspective. In this case the legendary figure is Count Dracula, but the story highlights his longtime aide / slave, Renfield, and brings the action into the modern world. The result is Renfield, the first of two new Dracula-related films this year.
Chris McKay’s rendering finds bug-eating R. M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) in modern-day New Orleans, locating hateful people to serve to his boss, the Prince of Darkness (Nicolas Cage). But Dracula wants innocent blood, and Renfield begins to search for a way out of his centuries-old predicament. Renfield befriends a moral New Orleans cop, Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), helping to save her and a bar full of innocents when a mob hit occurs. The mobster, Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz), gets away but tells his mother Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who befriends Dracula himself with a desire to control the city forever. It’s up to meager Renfield and Rebecca to find a way to foil the mob and the vampire and save the day.
Much of this is comedy, either played to the extreme — especially the spectacular bloodletting — for shock value, or satire of modern behavior, such as the self-help group to which Renfield inadvertently attaches himself. The comedy generally works; those who enjoy shows like “What We Do in the Shadows” should really enjoy this approach. I found it a bit much at times, and not enough at others. What does resonate with me is how smoothly Dracula takes to modern-day New Orleans, much in the same manner that Jack the Ripper found modern-day San Francisco so inviting in Time After Time, a great thriller from 1979. Hoult is fine and appealing as the mild-mannered former lawyer, and it is easy to root for him against the barbaric vampire who has controlled him for so long. Cage is impressive as Dracula; I was not really expecting that. He’s made so many crappy movies that it is refreshing to be reminded that he can, actually, act quite convincingly once in a while.
Renfield is kinda fun and kinda scary and very gross. It’s a very modern horror tale which is interesting in that this film is meant, in its way, to be a direct sequel to the famous 1931 Bela Lugosi version of Dracula, in which Dwight Frye so memorably portrayed Renfield. It would be an intriguing evening’s entertainment to pair the original Dracula with this film once it becomes available to do so at home. Seeing Renfield in that context would certainly be a shocker, coming after the rather static original film. Perhaps for this coming Halloween . . . ☆ ☆ 1/2. 30 May 2023.