Renfield

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Nicolas Cage is a fantastic actor. Granted, I think people online at least mostly agree with me at this point, and I know film nerds do. I’m not certain the more casual movie going public does, though. And I mean, fair enough. He’s often in such forgettable, lazy movies that would have been straight-to-video in an earlier time. The premise of most late stage Cage movies are something else. There’s a reason you’ve never heard of Between Worlds, for example. But out of the dozen or so Cage movies I’ve seen, I can’t think of a single one in which he was phoning it in. When you hire Cage, you always get him in full. He’ll try something, maybe fitting and maybe just plane wild. No matter what’s happening around him, he’s game. And if there was any uncertainty about whether he understands his place in pop culture, it was erased with last year’s excellent The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

One signifier of whether an actor is washed up is who’s willing to work with them. Is it just their friends? Or comparably washed up actors? What about directors? Is it just low budget no names? Are there any exciting new directors? Hell, can the actor elevate this director’s profile? And by this metric, Cage continues to excel. He helped introduce American audiences to Sion Sono with Prisoners of the Ghostland. He elevated Panos Cosmatos’ second film Mandy to instant classic. He partook in an ensemble for Into the Spider-Verse. And in Renfield, he’s working with some actors who are definitely known but still very much on their upswing, namely Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, and Nicholas Hoult. All of which build the picture of someone who everyone loves to work with and respects.

Now, why am I talking so much about Nicolas Cage when he’s a supporting character and has comparable screentime to Awkwafina? Simple: he’s by far the best part.n

Renfield finds the titular character (Nicholas Hoult) reluctantly helping his master, Dracula (Nicolas Cage), return to full power in modern day New Orleans after a defeat at the hand of some vampire hunters. He’s sick of serving Dracula, and so begins attending a self-help group for people in co-dependent relationships. Meanwhile, he draws the ire of the Lobo crime family by accidentally foiling their attempt to kill Rebecca (Awkwafina), a frustrated cop. Renfield and Rebecca team up to take care of their problems once and for all.

Typing that out really helps make it clear how overstuffed this film is. There’s so much going on, and none of it makes a lick of sense if you don’t first explain all that came before. Which means that when summarizing, you’re either going to be forced to spoil some plot points, or leave stuff out which makes it confusing, or both. It does all technically (technically) make sense, but the leaps made make for a lack of setup, leaving it unclear from the first act what the point is. The final set piece does follow from all that came before, but all the steps form a single chain rather than various thematically linked strands all coming together. It reminds me of the story structure used by young children, with repeated use of the phrase “and then”.

But even in that simple thread, the tone is all over the place. It’s a horror-comedy, which the film uses as an excuse to veer wildly between “comedy”, which mostly doesn’t land, and dramatic, emotional moments, which carry absolutely zero weight. There’s what seems like the remnants of a romance from an earlier revision of the script, but as is just feels like a perpetual meet-cute. The co-dependence throughline was a good idea, but is handled so incredibly sweatily and simply as to feel like more of a distraction than a salient point. And we are just in general awash in forced exposition and explaining things which don’t really need explaining.

There are a bunch of issues with the humor, but it’s part over explaining the joke (especially with regards to the co-dependence theme) and part laziness. There’s little here which your average fourth grader wouldn’t quip to their friends. And that tonal clash doesn’t help, nor do the times when we slow done for attempted emotional beats.

The action scenes had the potential to be fun, especially due to Renfield’s ability to gain super powers if he eats bugs. But they’re shot like absolute garbage. They use a dizzying amount of cuts, and we often see the movements from up close, obscuring and confusing them. There’s no sense of place or scene geography. It’s simply an all over the place mess.

The acting is…fine. Hoult continues his trend of doing a pretty good job, if nothing remarkable. Awkwafina is really giving it her all, throwing herself into the role, but she’s done dirty by the script, and there’s not much she can do to save it. The same can be said for Ben Schwartz as Teddy Lobo. As mentioned above, it’s Cage who really makes something of his character. He uses a more toned down demeanor to make his definitionally heightened character feel at home in the world. He lets his character design be the over the top bit, and god damn does it look like he’s having a ton of fun.

Speaking of Cage, one excellent decision was to introduce him and parts of the plot by recreating scenes and shots from 1931’s Dracula. He even nails Bela Lugosi’s famous dead stare with a slightly raised eyebrow. Which makes sense: Cage is a notorious movie buff, and seems to have a special place for older films, so I’ve no doubt he’s watched that film many, many times. And it’s great to see him given even more room to shine.

In that same spirit of the movie doing well by mimicking better material, I have to heap tremendous praise on the end credits. Not some post- or mid-credits scene; the credits themselves. I’ve gotten in the habit of sitting through at least the above the line credits (when the major cast and crew are listed before the full crawl), but most often the whole thing. It’s a great opportunity to reflect on what I just watched, as well as to absorb the names of those involved in making this happen, and witness interesting trends, such as the relatively recent practice of listing every member of an orchestra instead of just crediting them as a group. And it served me even better here, as I bet most people missed the awesome bit of craft during the crawl.

The above the line credits were good, but nothing special. We see digital shots of stuff around the room where Co-dependents Anonymous met, with cast and crew names on them, such as “Hello, my name is” nametags or coffee cups or whatnot. I appreciate the effort, since many films, even many of my favs, eschew it. But where it really shines is during the crawl.

(EDIT 08/13/23: Someone uploaded them to YouTube! So I’ve replaced the still image that was here with a link. It starts at 2:11.)

Right after “A Chris McKay Film”, we get the title card. Interestingly, it’s in a 50s style schlocky, comic book like font, as if you’re looking down on the font. Also, there’s digital film grain. We get some visual noise, as if the reel is zipping through images before changing. Then, we land on Dracula’s face menacing the audience, copied a few times from right to left, with all but the leftmost washed out in red and the leftmost in a faux black and white, flickering with noise, which contrasts it nicely with the rest of the frame, all bordered by a film strip. From there, we start to move through other images. Some are scenes from the film, some are unused shots, some are stills. They’re either presented in black and white with a red haze emanating from the edge of the film strip, or washed out with reds highlighted. Occasionally, there will be an image freeze frames, copied, and highlighted similar to the Dracula image which started them. And all is blanketed in fake film grain and noise. It’s gorgeous and fun and cool and slick as hell and I adore these end credits, as is clear since I just wrote about 400 words about them.

Listen, this is a bad movie, and not particularly fun bad, although I kinda see why some might love it. Good premise, poorly executed. So I’m delighted to see there’s actually something salvageable here. Not even just salvageable, but actively outstanding. Now, if only the whole movie was like that…