Movie Review: Renfield (2023)

Renfield (2023) directed by Chris McKay

Living a long and bloody life as the familiar of Dracula (Nicholas Cage), Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) find himself in modern-day New Orleans restarting their lives. Renfield realizes how bad it is to be under Dracula's thumb. He attends a self-help group for co-dependents. His original reason for joining was to find some people fro Dracula to feed on, you know, the kind of people that others would benefit from their disappearance. When he's involved in a blood-soaked battle in a bar, Renfield meets Rebecca (Awkwafina), a cop who is fighting organized crime and sees something more in Renfield than a victim-fetching victim. 

Any serious message in the film has to compete with a lot of other stuff--gore, mayhem, jokes, and Cage's performance. The film wants to be a horror comedy and succeeds at delivering laughs along with over-the-top fights which include gigantic sprays of blood and body parts being ripped off and used as weapons. Watching it reminded me of Violent Night, another over-the-top fight-fest with a dubious premise. This movie has a bit more style and hangs on to its message of empowering even those trapped in toxic relationships. The message feels a little bit like a fig leaf of justification for the film's existence as it revels in blood-soaked chaos.

Mildly recommended--the gore is extreme, Nicholas Cage is fun, and you probably already know if you would enjoy a film like this or not.