‘Renfield’: Bloody leisure with muddled script

Ryan Ranc, Senior Movie Columnist
April 12, 2023

“Renfield,” directed by Chris McKay (“The Lego Film,” “The Lego Batman Film”), follows henchman Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) who works for Rely Dracula (Nicolas Cage) as he explores his poisonous relationship together with his grasp who retains him alive purely to feed his starvation for individuals and energy all through a number of a long time.

The film, whereas delving into horror components and gory visuals, clearly goals to be an motion film greater than anything. It makes an attempt to concurrently please gore hounds, informal horror followers and motion diehards whereas failing to totally obtain any of those objectives. The movie portrays gore via a mixture of sensible results and CGI, which leaves audiences feeling comparable combined feelings towards the flick. Horror references solely happen on the very starting of the film and slowly trickle out to favor a extra action-focused storyline up till the ultimate sequences by which horror and motion meet collectively in concord. Nonetheless, no quantity of campiness can disguise the truth that “Renfield” lacks a constant tone.

The script written by Ryan Ridley (“Rick and Morty,” “The Wastelander”) and Robert Kirkman (“Invincible,” “The Strolling Lifeless”) units up an intriguing premise, however leaves a lot to be desired. Its greatest points lie within the pacing, dialogue and comedy. With a brisk 93-minute runtime, the script strikes far too rapidly from occasion to occasion. In a single scene, a cop releases a detained felony, solely to confront her never-before-seen sister instantly after.The script strikes via occasions at a tempo too fast for viewers to benefit from the plot. On prime of that, the dialogue feels unnatural. Each character appears to be preventing to ship a one-liner throughout each scene. Even then, their quips solely land half the time, leaving the opposite half to be lifeless makes an attempt at half-hearted catchphrases.

Regardless of its many shortcomings, the movie’s true enjoyment comes from its devoted actors. Each performer, from Cage, to Hoult to Jenna Kanell (“Terrifier,” “The Bye Bye Man”) — who will get probably the most audible laughs out of audiences — oozes care and experience. Each actor in “Renfield” transforms a tough script into an pleasant flick for audiences in every single place. Cage does his regular Cage-isms, Hoult performs Renfield with huge quantities of allure, Awkwafina (“Ocean’s Eight,” “Loopy Wealthy Asians”) sells the story’s themes of heroism and Ben Schwartz (“Sonic the Hedgehog,” “Parks and Recreation”) chews up the surroundings as all the time.

“Renfield” suffers from a messy script and temperamental tone, however advantages from its actors committing to the movie’s campiness, alongside first rate motion and gore. Seeing “Renfield” in theaters will probably be a worthwhile expertise because it stays entertaining all through its runtime, and it’ll go away audiences clambering for Cage to play Dracula once more, hopefully not in a “Vampire’s Kiss” remake.