Renfield is another one of those cases where the film doesn’t live up to its premise. If you’ve seen the trailers or read the synopsis then you know what it’s about. You know how fun and inventive it sounds. Well, I am sad to announce that Renfield is quite far from being one of the great horror comedies but, with some better writing, it could’ve been.

After 90 years of attending to his master’s every need, Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) contemplates life without Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage). He ventures out into New Orleans, gets friendly with a cop (Awkwafina), joins a support group for people in toxic relationships and spends more time on himself. Renfield is enjoying his new life but his master doesn’t approve and suddenly, a big devastating rift emerges in the two’s almost century-long relationship.

The Themes

If you haven’t picked it up from the trailers, Renfield is about domestic abuse. Dracula is the abusive partner and Renfield his victim. Using the dynamic between these two classic characters as a metaphor for domestic abuse is a funny and quite genius idea and the film does utilize it. Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult have great chemistry, you’re able to believe quite easily that they’ve been together for almost a hundred years

This would make for a good couple of scenes and it does but is that enough to fuel a feature length comedy horror? The film unfortunately proves that it’s not.

Renfield is not subtle in the slightest. It’s one of those films where characters will state the theme of the story in a sentence. By the first 30 minutes you know what Renfield’s about and the only thing that makes the rest of the film worth watching is the gore, humour and Cage’s Dracula.

You’d think that with a subject as complex as domestic abuse and characters as famous as Dracula and Renfield the film would have plenty of material to play with. Renfield’s arc of learning and escaping Dracula’s psychological hold on him is treated like an afterthought. We see most of his learning via his attendance at the support group but we see very little of him putting what he’s learnt to good use.

A good example is when Renfield learns to make a life for himself away form Dracula. He implements this by getting himself an apartment, decorating it, buying some new clothes and socialising more. As separate fully written scenes, these actions would’ve had a lot of pathos but compiled together into a 3-minute montage as they are in the film they have little effect.

This is not helped by the fact that the film has a B plot, which concerns Awkwafina’s police officer hunting a crime family that’re responsible for her father’s murder. I think Jeremy Jahns hit the nail on the head in his review when he said the film feels like “two movies.”

A clear effort is made to marry the two plots towards the end but that doesn’t make either one feel less alien to each other. If Awkwafina’s story was shortened or cut out entirely and more time was dedicated to Renfield’s recovery then the story could’ve been a more effective metaphor.

The Horror and Comedy

Renfield has more than enough laughs. There’re many great gags that poke fun at vampire lore, support groups, Renfield’s fish-out-of-water existence and of course Dracula himself.

The gore is fantastic. It doesn’t look convincing or realistic but it’s clearly not supposed to. It’s not on par with Peter Jackson’s early films in terms of disgust but it definitely matches the bloody absurdity of Frank Henenlotter films like Frankenhooker.

Renfield’s a decent comedy but is it a good horror comedy? Well, the only elements that are distinctly horror is the gore and Dracula. Apart from those, there are no clear attempts in the film to generate tension or to disturb, which is a pity because I would’ve liked to have seen Nicolas Cage attempt to portray a legitimately intimidating character. Alas, while he does embody the power and charisma of Dracula, you can’t help but see him as another Cageist clown. He’s fun to watch don’t get me wrong but, like the film itself, I could only see what he could’ve been.

Renfield is a fun watch that I’d recommend to any fan of horror, gore, Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage and Dracula as you’ll all get something out of it. Expect a decent cult film done by an inoffensive Hollywood hired gun. Not as special as you’d hope but still fun. So fun in fact you might give it a second watch.

I give Renfield a blood-soaked 7 out of 10.