RENFIELD

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
RENFIELD - 2023 USA Release: April 14, 2023 Skybound Entertainment, Universal Pictures Rating: USA: R

So there's this guy, see? He goes by the name of Renfield (Nicholas Hoult: CLASH OF THE TITANS, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, WARM BODIES, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, DARK PLACES, MAD MAX FURY ROAD, EQUALS, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX, THE MENU), but that's really his last name. He prefers to be called...

No wait. It's important that you know that he currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana and he's part of a self-help group put together by a local church and led by the eager and solicitous rubber-lipped Mark (Brandon Scott Jones: GHOSTS [TV]).

They don't have a table of hors d'oeuvres and cocktails at their little weekly get-together, they have snacks and drinks. It's here where they're all coming to terms with the monsters in their lives. These are monstrous humans they've invited in, expecting love and friendship, only to wind up emotionally chained by an enemy who feeds on their good but ultimately self-destructive natures.

This makes these individuals in the group desperate and self-loathing, although no one is specifically singled out as being raised both Catholic and Jewish by the same parents and two sides of a family that...

Ahem...

But this movie isn't about me and I need to drop my narcissistic pretensions.

Speaking of narcissistic pretensions, Renfield has worked for the same boss long past several decades worth of mandatory retirement and by this time you should be aware that This Renfield is indeed That Renfield and his boss is Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage: BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, 8MM, GRINDHOUSE, NEXT, KICK-ASS, SEASON OF THE WITCH, MANDY, COLOR OUT OF SPACE).

However, unlike nearly all Dracula and Vampire movies that have ever existed, this Dracula and Renfield don't live in a small and enclosed ecosystem, one with a shelf of innocent victims waiting their turn at the hunger of a lowly demon parasite: who has convinced itself that it is a god.

In RENFIELD, his group therapy session is only one of many cogs that turn in a complex, human society that is slowly decaying to death by a cancer that aggressively feeds on the only dying body that can keep it alive.

There are few healthy cells in this body, but one of them is Police Officer Rebecca (Awkwafina: PARADISE HILLS [TV]). This cop finds herself forced to come to grips with the fact that her entire police department, and indeed, possibly the entire police force of New Orleans, Louisiana (where much of this movie was shot), is criminally corrupt. The PDNO are largely owned by the Lobo family, run by their Matriarch, Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo: THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, THE LAKE HOUSE, GRIMM [TV], STAR TREK BEYOND, IMPULSE [TV], RUN SWEETHEART RUN, GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE, THE EXPANSE [TV]). Both are often nearly toppled by the idiot antics of Bellafrancesca's spoiled man child of a son, Tedward (a typecast Ben Schwartz: M.O.D.O.K. [TV], RUMBLE [TV]).

See, Renfield has kind of adopted his self-help group so, instead of feeding them all to "Master", as was the original plan, Renfield has a double life where he tracks down the monstrous people who harm the members of his self-help group and feeds those unsavory folks to Dracula instead.

Unfortunately for Dracula, the problem with unsavory folks is that they taste rather... unsavory. They live unhealthy lives, have poor diets, and taint their blood with too many recreational drugs.

Dracula wants a better menu: innocent victims

Ah, the pure sweet taste of goodness and virginity! Renfield needs to deliver.

However, in a modern age where cameras are everywhere, Renfield's harvesting of bargain basement street souljahs has not gone unnoticed by the upper-echelon scumbags. This has the unforeseen consequence of putting Renfield in the crosshairs of an increasing number of new enemies. Renfield, who largely remains a product of the 19th century, was blind to such consequences, and he serves a Master who remains a product of many centuries removed from that.

However many centuries remote Dracula may be from 21st Century Western human culture, one thing Dracula never forgets is: human behavior never changes.

The script by Writer and Producer Robert Kirkman (BATTLEPOPE, INVINCIBLE, THE WALKING DEAD [TV], OUTCAST [TV]) and Ryan Ridley (RICK AND MORTY [TV]) is a tight fright and hilarious to boot.

Under Producer and Director Chris McKay (THE TOMORROW WAR), RENFIELD borrows heavily from Wire-Fu movies like THE MATRIX, X-MEN, and KILL BILL, as well as fight choreographed John Woo-style Gun-kata movies like EQUILIBRIUM, KICK-ASS, and JOHN WICK.

Speaking of Producers, the team of brothers Sean and Bryan Furst (IN THE WOODS, FIRST SNOW, DAYBREAKERS, DEAD BY DAWN [TV]) brings plenty of Horror movie experience to the table. There's no awkward feel of a cynical Horror movie cash grab about this one. How many Producers do you know who can not only produce a Horror Documentary about wild animals, but with such educational credibility that it is showcased by The National Geographic?

RENFIELD is insanely hilarious to the point that I'm certain I was laughing so much that I was missing crucial dialogue. McKay was also canny enough to recognize those brief John Wick like moments where the audience laughs at the way a certain number of the many ludicrous kills are performed. I feel confident in saying that because Chris seemed to distill all of those fleeting moments into the fight scenes of this movie.

At its core, RENFIELD is a movie about a slave who, for the first time in his existence, finds himself in a free country and comes to crave the liberty. Yet his boss is more than a slave owner. Through Renfield's own bad choices, Mother Dearest Dracula is also the only family he has. Renfield's biggest battle is not with Dracula - he knows all of the many ways to do a vampire in, as he's protected Dracula for over a century from those very things - but his own dysfunctional sense of Stockholm Syndrome.

Dracula as needy victim, brother, father, Master, protects himself by knowing how to manipulate Renfield through all of that.

Cage and Hoult's chemistry is a perfect acid to base mixture of their character's rancid relationship. Cage's Dracula pumps the pedals on being both a threatening monster and a maligned victim, as would befit a creature of enormous superhuman powers as well as delicate weaknesses*. Being a Nightwalker who must shun the sun, makes immortality a frustrating existence when one has to rely on half-turned, half-wit servants like Daywalkers: the lowest members of the very food they eat, for protection (*even butterflies can withstand sunlight).

One of the main reasons half-turned Daywalkers are of the lowest, least worthy of humanity is: They all have an untrustworthy natural sense of betrayal.

In wonderously witty ballet of Cage's expressive physical humor, he writes Dracula's regard for Renfield large, just to rub it in his servant's face.

In fact, to go out on a limb here, Nicolas Cage is the best Dracula since Bela Lugosi.

RENFIELD takes a Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges madcap comedy ethos to everything, and all without being slowed down by the (then) omnipresent specter of the Hayes Code, or the expected Hollywood false step of momentary inward ennui. You know the kind, that moment where the hero pauses to reflect and say, "Look at me killing murdering monsters. I'm no better than them."

Instead, the movie turns this duplicitous B.S. on its head by having Dracula deliver a version of that line in all of his manipulative deceit.

I can quickly rattle off any number of Horror Comedies that I love (or I can just turn my head to look at my extensive disc collection), but there are few that made me laugh so much and for that RENFIELD gets -

All Five Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2023 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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