The failure of the highly anticipated Renfield can be attrbuted to both the marketing and the expectations of what the movie would be. This is a very violent and gory movie. It feels like a Troma movie. But trailers made it appear that they were going to be seeing something like Beetlejuice meets The Odd Couple with Nicolas Cage playing Dracula.
But the bigger problem is both Dracula and Renfield take a backseat to a dull crime story about corruption in New Orleans and a crime family. I can’t help but see parallels with Innocent Blood, the 1992 John Landis horror comedy about a woman vampire played by Anne Parillaud hunting the Italian Mafia in Pittsburgh. Renfield has a great concept but even at an hour and a half, it feels like an eternity.
Set in modern times, Nicholas Hoult plays the title character who is the long-suffering servant to Dracula. Both Hoult and Cage have fun in their roles. Considering that one of Cage’s earlier roles was in Vampire’s Kiss where he thought he was a vampire, there’s a nice wink to fans of his. Basically, they’re having to live in secrecy over the yearsa as Renfield finds bodies for his master to consume. In New Orleans, they’re in a dilapidated hospital.
Renfield, himself, does eat bugs. But there’s a reason behind it – it gives him super strength. I’m not sure I like this concept because it turns Renfield into some John Wickian style person who rip people apart with his bare hands and one punch can cause someone’s head to explode in blood and gore. Robert Kirkman of The Walking Dead fame gets a “Story by” writing credit. Reports from Hollywood report this was suppose to be connected to the failed Dark Universe movies (Dracula Untold and the 2017 Mummy) of the 2010s.
Ryan Ridley, who had worked as a writer on Rick and Morty and Community, and Ava Tramer, writer for Angie Tribeca and Duncanville, among others, are also credited as writers. Chris McKay who directed the great LEGO Batman Movie and the awful The Tomorrow War, directs. And for a movie with a pricey budget of $65 million, I expected more. But instead, we get a tired crime-and-cops story as Awkwafina plays Rebecca Quincy, a New Orleans police officer, upset over Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz), a mobster always getting away with things.
Teddy’s mother, Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo), is the mob boss of New Orleans who has all the powerful people in her pocket. And she’s responsible for the death of Rebecca’s father, who was a law officer too. Rebecca is often at odds with her sister, Kate (Camille Chen), an FBI agent. This story doesn’t really drive the movie as much as it should because it just feels like a cop-out, pardon the pun. And Aghdashloo, who’s always a joy to watch, isn’t given much to do.
The trailer featured Renfield having to attend group therapy for people in co-dependent relationships and these scenes provide the movie with some needed humor. But the story overall has a been there done there vibe once you realize the mob story is going to take up much of the plot. Even Dracula looks like he’s been thrown to the curb to the tired action scenes that we’ve seen done better in other movies.
There is some creative casting. William Ragsdale of the original Fright Night has a cameo as does horror actress Caroline Williams. These are nice little Easter eggs for horror fans. But it still doesn’t make up for a movie that uses its one-joke premise up before the first act is over.
The movie could have easily called Igor, because it’s like Frankenstein’s monster it borrows from so many other movies and works of horror. And while sometimes, as in Alien, that ends up being a great movie, here you have something that looked good on paper. But it’s drained of all its life in the final cut. You have a hodge podge of Blade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Innocent Blood, John Carpenter’s Vampires, From Dusk till Dawn and even movies like The Big Easy.
But son-of-a-gun, there’s no big fun on this bayou!
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 