Film It's funny, it's silly, it's surprisingly sweet
This is a movie you go into expecting a simple silly (and very bloody) comedy. And it is. But the support group are what really elevates the movie from "Yeah, it was funny I guess" to a movie that's both hilarious and more touching than you'd expect. While the trailers suggest they're just a quick scene or two then gone, they and their interactions with Renfield a significant driving force of the plot. Renfield sought them out simply to find some victims he wouldn't feel bad about (their abusers) but they and Rebecca are what let Renfield recognize just how abusive his own relationship with Dracula is and make steps to leave him. Which of course makes their deaths all the more tragic and nearly makes Renfield cross the Despair Event Horizon.
That said, it's very much an action comedy. Renfield rips a man's arms off and impales two other men with the shoulders of said arms. One villain is kicked in the stomach so hard that he explosively shits his pants. Both heroes take complete and utter glee in their extremely violent and thorough attempt to kill Dracula permanently. And frankly, you can't help but love any time Nicholas Cage plays a role that fully encourages him to go full Nicholas Cage.
Overall, it's a very solid movie that I'd recommend to anyone who can stomach a ludicrous amount of blood.
Film A fun horror comedy with a weak soul to it.
Renfield branches from the original Universal Dracula to show Dracula and his servant in a story where they have lived together until the present day. Renfield's obsession with eating bugs is here his way of temporarily borrowing supernatural powers, and he struggles with feeding his master after feeling tired of his mistreatment and the crimes he's committed. Meanwhile, a cop investigates a crime family corrupting her force and realizes something weird is up when Renfield gets involved.
The film is a fun vampire comedy that's ludicrously gory in its action scenes and often absurdist. There are good notes of the classic film, including recreated shots with the actors of this film, and some of the jokes are spot-on. Nicholas Hoult works as a beleaguered yet somewhat cool waif-man serving a vampire, and eternal enigma Nicolas Cage is predictably spellbinding as Dracula. He's both threatening and goofy as hell in equally delightful ways, and in typical Cage fashion, it feels like everything was given to the role for reasons known only to him. The visual style of the film is also kinetic and colorful and very nice to watch.
However, it's the heart of the film that really struggles for me tonally and script-wise. The story attempts to explore toxic relationships by showing Dracula as a narcissistic abusive figure enslaving Renfield, and Renfield beginning to learn to assert himself with group therapy and psychological self-help techniques. Sometimes, this is effectively poignant and funny—one scene features Renfield breaking down as he flips through a self-help book to call out phrases in his defense, framed very much like his own failing attempt at perfoming an exorcism against the demon prince Dracula. In other places, the tone seems indecisive. Does the film think self-help mantras and therapy vocabulary are helpful or hollow? It seems to say both. And the ending feels like it's way too on the nose and blatant with how Renfield asserts himself. I feel like little of Renfield's deprogramming feels organic and depicted for the audience in practice.
I also think the film is a little too absurd, if not a lot too absurd, for this premise to work. An abusive dynamic between Dracula and Renfield feels better suited to a horror drama in my eyes, since the fraught emotions are naturally diluted by a comedy (and perhaps a bit by Cage). The film may be coming at the story of escaping abuse far too lightly and I wonder if it's not entirely authentic. It feels most clicked together when it's an action crime movie, not when it's about Renfield's story.
I also think the film may have been trying too hard with the profanity. I'm not offended by cursing, but it stood out to me just how many F-bombs were dropped in this film when it just didn't seem necessary.
Overall, this is a fun movie perhaps not equipped for the more meaningful storytelling it tries to include. Watch this for a popcorn ride, not the sentiment.