Review: Renfield Finds Comedy as Dracula’s Aide Struggles With Morality

Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) bursts into his neighbor’s unit, grabs an ant farm from a younger boy and suggestions the contents — ants and sand alike — into his open mouth. As Dracula’s longtime acquainted, Renfield derives energy from consuming bugs, fairly than human blood. “You’re not man,” the boy’s mom yells at him, disgust in her voice regardless of the comedy of the second. The declaration calls again to an earlier scene, when Renfield moved into the ramshackle condominium advanced and contributed an ant to the boy’s terrarium. Then, the mom praised him as man.

That query of whether or not the eponymous character is nice or not is on the heart of Renfield, the brand new 93-minute comedy by Chris McKay (The Tomorrow Warfare, The Lego Film). It preoccupies Renfield himself and in addition considerations his romantic curiosity and co-lead Rebecca — the tough-as-nails beat cop performed by Awkwafina, who’s pissed off by her low-level duty and carries a chip on her shoulder since her cop father’s premature loss of life.

However goodness or lack of it doesn’t fear the viewers, and even the assist group that gives the movie’s framing. Slightly, we simply need to know: Is Renfield going to interrupt freed from Dracula?

As performed by Hoult, our hero/antihero is Robert Montague Renfield, an English lawyer circa 1900 who was persuaded by Dracula (Nicolas Cage) to go away his spouse and baby in favor of a life he solely dreamed of, however he finally ends up being the vampire’s Uber Eats-like corpse supply man. After a while, Renfield sours on the job (which is sensible as a result of he doesn’t get a lot from it, apart from the power to eat bugs and go nuclear) and, frankly, begins to really feel like he won’t be particular person. 

The movie begins with Renfield attending a assist group for codependent individuals. He’s in search of to search out its members’ abusers to feed to his grasp — however Dracula calls for harmless victims as an alternative. Cowed, Renfield heads to a restaurant the place he stumbles upon a success on Rebecca and, impressed together with her refusal to be afraid within the face of loss of life, intercedes on her behalf.

The second results in the primary of the wildly campy battle scenes which are the perfect a part of Renfield. Any battle scene in any film is clearly staged, however administrators can select to cover the strings. McKay takes the other tack with fights which are hilariously choreographed so that each one the shifting components are seen, and you’ll inform that’s the purpose.

For instance, in that first battle, at virtually each different second Renfield and Rebecca are slamming a fist or boot into a nasty man simply in time to spin round and save the opposite with the follow-through power of their motions. Or within the post-ant-consumption battle, Renfield separates a nasty man’s arms from his physique after which throws the limbs throughout the condominium advanced’s courtyard to take out two of Rebecca’s adversaries. If the exercise had paused and the digicam panned over the fighters frozen midair, Matrix-style, nobody would have been shocked. However regardless of the highly effective hits that explode physique components and sufficient gushing blood to make Tarantino shed a cheerful tear, the scenes are comedic fairly than intense.

Dracula doesn’t make a lot of an look in such moments till the tip of the movie, which highlights one thing about Renfield that sure viewers can be sad about: This isn’t a Dracula film, and this isn’t a Nic Cage film. Although he’s enjoyable as Dracula, rolling his eyes and twitching his face in that overly dramatic Nic Cage means, he’s undoubtedly a secondary character with out all that a lot display screen time. He’s adequate — and even pleasant in moments the place he capers and cackles and brings his psychic power in opposition to Renfield. However he doesn’t steal the present. A few of the lesser characters, like Brandon Scott Jones because the assist group chief and Ben Schwartz because the feeble prison Redward Lobo, do as a lot with restricted display screen time and loads of gags.

Awkwafina is convincing as Rebecca and appears to totally inhabit the character, solely letting her trademark scratchy tirades sneak out sometimes, like when Rebecca shouts down her whole precinct and accuses them of being within the pocket of a gang. She’s a good match with Hoult, who positively radiates frantic “who me, harmless me?” power all through the movie, even because the physique counts climb. Their chemistry is a bit off, but it surely’s adequate to maintain watching.

The slight mismatch typifies Renfield. It’s a comedy, clearly. Nevertheless it’s additionally a meet cute, a gang film, a coming-of-age story, a redemption story and a vampire flick. It satirizes the self-help language of assist teams to questionable impact. It’s rather a lot for one film, and it’s a little bit of a multitude. By the tip of the movie, it’s certainly clear to everybody that Renfield isn’t precisely good, however nobody cares. The identical will be mentioned of Renfield — it’s not precisely movie, however that doesn’t matter: It’s adequate for just a few laughs.

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