Renfield (2023)

2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Wham Bram

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

This action/horror/comedy starts well, with a good idea and some big laughs, but it soon devolves into an overly familiar mishmash of fights and chases, trying both too hard and not hard enough.

Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has been the familiar of Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) for the better part of a century, tending to his needs and bringing him fresh victims. Hiding out in New Orleans, he gets the idea to attend a support group for people in co-dependent or abusive relationships, and then take out the abusers. But these people make Dracula weak, and he demands innocent blood, which makes Renfield uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, the Lobo crime family, which owns the police force and runs the city, take an interest in Renfield after he helps the town's one good cop, Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), save a restaurant full of people from an attack by the loose cannon son Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz). And this gives Dracula a most villainous idea...

Renfield begins with the bright idea of the old character attending a support group for co-dependent or abusive relationships, before giving us a little backstory, and morphing actors Hoult and Cage into black-and-white images from the classic Dracula (1931). Their push-and-pull relationship is interesting, and Cage gets to go delightfully over-the-top in his performance.

But for some reason, Renfield has the ability to fight like John Wick, and we get several, repetitive bang-up action scenes with leaping, kicking, and spurting blood. And this brings in the subplot with the Lobo crime family, which really drags things down. It's familiar and dull, and it sucks the energy away from the Dracula-Renfield dynamic, and kills most of the humor.

Not even an energetic Awkwafina can get in many laughs during this section. Renfield could have been a funnier movie with less action and more character, or it could have been a more exciting movie with more care given to the story, but as it is, it's neither.