Renfield: An Interesting Idea That Fails In Execution

Occasionally a movie will come out that very obviously is the result of one part of a pitch being a fantastic idea while the rest of it just needs a little extra development that it never was given. In the case of Renfield, it feels like the movie is entirely based around the idea of having Nicolas Cage play Dracula and flipping the dynamic on its head with no further thought given. What the movie ends up as is a bunch of somewhat comedic moments trying to hold the viewer’s attention to moderate success.

Renfield tells the story of Dracula’s sidekick Renfield (Nicholas Holt) as he strives to get out of the abusive relationship that he has found himself in. With the help of an overzealous traffic officer (Awkwafina), Renfield aims to take down Dracula (Nicolas Cage) once and for all so he can have his normal life back. Ben Schwartz, Brandon Scott Jones, and Camille Chen also star.

The movie cannot decide what genre it wants to belong in as it careens from action to comedy to horror without taking into consideration tonal shift or where the narrative is at that moment. At the same time, it does not commit to any of these for enough of a runtime for any one of the genres to stick as the dominant tone of the film. That said, some of the comedic moments do land, however, the fact that they’re sporadic because of the genre mix makes the movie hard to watch.

There is a watchable movie somewhere within Renfield, the problem is that the idea seems to have begun and ended with the idea of casting Nicolas Cage as Dracula. The rest of the film never really falls into place around it and, in an effort to pad this out to a theatrical release, a lot of the runtime just seems like filler. There is a clean and concise at most 40-minute short film in there that would have been a more enjoyable experience but for those on the fence, watching the trailer will suffice.

That’s not to say that Renfield is an entirely unenjoyable experience, it’s just that in the wide range of movies being released in the month of April leading up to the start of the blockbuster season there are better uses of an hour and forty minutes in a theater. This is an excellent example of a movie that is perfect to watch at home streaming so it is probably best to wait until it comes home.

Final Rating: 6.5/10