Ren­field

With the release of Chris McKay’s Ren­field, Nico­las Cage joins the likes of Bela Lugosi, Christo­pher Lee, Gary Old­man and Adam San­dler, who have all played the most famous vam­pire in the world: Count Drac­u­la. Sure­ly an actor as mav­er­ick and tal­ent­ed as Cage could bring some­thing new to the role – par­tic­u­lar­ly in a com­e­dy-hor­ror set­ting, where Drac is being nursed back to full strength in present-day New Orleans, by his long-suf­fer­ing and lit­tle-respect­ed assis­tant Ren­field. Sure­ly. Surely?!

No dis­re­spect to Nicholas Hoult, who plays the put-upon ser­vant who is usu­al­ly por­trayed as an insect-eat­ing, men­tal­ly unsta­ble min­ion of the Dark Lord, but the prospect of Cage play­ing Drac­u­la was a huge sell­ing point for Ren­field. An icon­ic char­ac­ter, an icon­ic actor — cut, print, check. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Drac­u­la here — as a live-action ver­sion of The Count from Sesame Street rather than a chill­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of evil — speaks to the wider prob­lems with Ren­field, writ­ten by Ryan Rid­ley (who pre­vi­ous­ly worked on Rick and Morty and Com­mu­ni­ty). While the film is osten­si­bly about Renfield’s attempts to free him­self from the grip of Drac­u­la, this inter­est­ing plot­line is lost to a roman­tic plot between Ren­field and local police offi­cer Rebec­ca Quin­cy (Awka­fi­na) who is try­ing to take down the local crim­i­nal gang who mur­dered her father five years previously. 

This deci­sion means we don’t real­ly get as much of Ren­field and Drac­u­la as the film’s premise sug­gests — they only share a few scenes togeth­er, and there is lit­tle done to estab­lish how Ren­field has been impact­ed by 80 years of gru­some servi­tude. Hoult is per­fect­ly capa­ble, but there isn’t much for him to, ahem, sink his teeth into. A few cur­so­ry men­tions of his for­mer wife and daugh­ter do lit­tle to con­vey what Ren­field gave up to serve Drac­u­la, and Quin­cy — a stock love inter­est — seems com­plete­ly unboth­ered by the dis­cov­ery that vam­pires are real, let alone the fact she’s falling for one. We learn lit­tle of Renfield’s per­son­al­i­ty beyond his sub­mis­sion to Drac­u­la, mak­ing his free­dom an under­whelm­ing proposition.

The film’s slap­stick ultra vio­lence and gore are per­haps intend­ed as short­hand for Dracula’s deprav­i­ty, but the con­stant under­cut­ting of this with ​‘Woah, isn’t this whacky!’ humour means the impact is quick­ly dulled, and what could have been a charm­ing odd cou­ple film about a super­nat­ur­al break-up is tonal­ly mis­matched, not quite a com­e­dy, not quite a hor­ror, not quite a crime caper, not quite a romance. 

It’s bad form as a crit­ic to review the film you wish you saw instead of the one you did, but in the case of Ren­field, it does feel like so much poten­tial was wast­ed here, both in the sto­ry and the cast. A tighter focus on Ren­field and Drac­u­la — per­haps fol­low­ing their exploits over decades, ala Inter­view with the Vam­pire — would have felt more fleshed out, and allowed Hoult more room to show Renfield’s men­tal dis­in­ter­gra­tion and even­tu­al emancipation. 

What we actu­al­ly have in Ren­field is a film that feels poor­ly con­ceived and lazi­ly exe­cut­ed — a for­get­table entry into the Drac­u­la Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse, that might pass the time but real­ly doesn’t offer us any­thing to chew on. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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