RENFIELD (2023)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

As I write this, RENFIELD has already underperformed in the American box office, meaning that even great box office abroad won't keep the film from being viewed as a major failure. I found it only a moderately entertaining experience-- possibly because it's the first gore-comedy to have appeared in American theaters since Covid-- but I would have liked to see headliner Nicholas Cage hit one out of the park with his first major-studio role in the past eleven years.

I'd venture to say that this is often the fate of movie scripts that fall into development-hell, and then get picked up with a new angle in mind. At least the person doing the revision was the original source of the pitch made back in 2014, when Robert Kirkman attempted to sell an updated Renfield as part of the then-ballyhooed Universal "monster-verse." When that version was sidelined by the failure of the 2017 MUMMY, Kirkman tried a second pitch, stressing a comedy send-up of both the quintessential vampire-servant and the quintessential vampire.

It's current-day New Orleans, one in which a criminal organization,the Lobo Family, holds near-total power over the police department. Only one courageous police officer, Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), seeks to take down the Lobos, not least because she suspects that the Lobos' heir apparent Teddy (Ben Schwartz) killed Rebecca's father. 

But the Big Easy soon plays host to a greater evil. For over a century, R.M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has served Count Dracula (Cage), both made virtually immortal thanks to the Count's fabulous powers. Following Dracula's defeat by Van Helsing (supposedly in the early 20th century), the vampire fled England with Renfield, his last servitor. Unlike the Renfield of both the Stoker novel and the 1931 film, this version of Renfield shares Dracula's agelessness. It's not clear whether or not Renfield has ever been vampirized by the Count as he is in the Lugosi film, but the script calls the unfortunate pawn a "familiar," which apparently gives him some vampire-like traits but none of the undead's weaknesses. For a century Renfield has helped his master set up in various locations from which Dracula preys on innocent victims. However, at least once or twice before, vampire-hunters have driven the duo from their hideouts, and so Renfield brings the coffin-bound aristocrat to New Orleans for new "bleeding-grounds."

Unfortunately for Drac, while he recuperates from his last clash with the forces of good, Renfield has enough time on his hands to learn about the American concept of co-dependent relationships. The idea of a vampire-servant becoming addicted to pop-psychology is a thin premise indeed, and it wears out its welcome very quickly.

By chance Renfield runs afoul of the Lobo Family-- and because a familiar can boost his strength and invulnerability to colossal heights by munching on bugs (sort of Renfield's version of spinach), the murderous thugs always get the worst of the encounters. In the second of these gory battles, Renfield interferes with Teddy Lobo's attempt to ice Rebecca. Their meet-cute is more like "meat-cute," given Renfield's ability to tear men's limbs off, but Rebecca thinks he's sweet. 

Teddy Lobo escapes the carnage but tracks Renfield to his master's hidden redoubt, and this ends up forging an alliance quicker than you can say "super-villain team-up." Around the same time Renfield imagines that he can just leave the Master of Vampires flat, and this works about as well as one might expect. But although Dracula re-asserts his authority over his servant by slaughtering Renfield's support-group, this ends up being the last straw that forces Renfield to do his own team-up, as he and Rebecca make war upon the Count and his new gangsta-familiars.

As I've indicated, there's a lot of gory action here, made funny just by its very over-the-top nature. The spotty attempts at characterization are neither funny nor affecting, though; neither Renfield nor Rebecca ever seem like anything more than walking cliches. Hoult is at least engaging playing the worm who turns, but Awkwafina is shrill and tedious at every turn. In a scene where Rebecca awakes after having suffered a gunshot-wound to her arm-- one which Renfield patches-- Awkwafina plays the whole scene without the slightest intimation that her arm pains or even inconveniences her.

But Cage's Dracula is an island of flamboyant glory amidst these seas of mediocrity. In many ways Cage is often closer to Stoker's vampire than most other cinematic versions. Stoker's Drac is not a charmer, not a lovelorn romantic. He's a ruthless brute who expects others to sacrifice their lives for his betterment. He's fascinating because he has amassed so much power, and Cage plays to that conception in every scene. Cage's Count is only different from Stoker's in that this vamp has a sense of mordant humor; he loves mocking Renfield's paltry efforts at self-determination. Yet in many ways he's as locked into medieval patterns of thinking as Renfield is. Why doesn't he try to amass some political power long before the encounter with the Lobos? The real answer is that Kirkman's script wants to keep Dracula an archaic figure, utterly out of touch with modern customs. A more skillful writer might have advanced the notion, as Stoker does, that being undead makes it tough for him to think outside the coffin, so to speak. I don't imagine Cage will ever have another shot at playing the master vampire, though, so this comical take on a million "I vant to suck you blood" tropes will have to suffice.