Diandra´s Movie Review- Renfield: A Campy, Gory Co-Dependcy Tale
Listen, we´ve all been toxic. We have all chosen an absolute jerk as a friend or partner, and genuinely thought it was love or rebelliousness because in this world there is a genuine confusion between being blunt and incredibly rude. For many petty jerks, honesty is a weapon to hurt, not free people, and, for many of us, truth is the very thing we avoid to free ourselves. In the hilarious Renfield, based off the titular character and slave/servant of Dracula, Nicholas Hoult echoes his Warm Bodies´ glory to give us another, nuanced monster.
From The Great to X-Men, Hoult really knows how to bring out the charm and details of beings deemed ¨beast¨ or potentially, genocidal maniacs. In Renfield, he makes audiences realize that IS his acting gift by delivering one of the most pathetic characters´ journey for redemption and a back-bone. On paper, Renfield is so cancelled. He has been feeding Dracula innocent victims for decades, and going on a mindless binge of villainy and malice to serve his master. He has NO spine and feels like the definition of a loser and coward. Yet, love is blind or rather obsession, and he really thought good ol´ Dracula (Nicolas Cage in his ultimate campiness) kind of cared for him beyond helping him satisfy his serial killer tendencies.
It takes the love of a quirky, determined New Orleans cop Rebecca (Awkwafina) and a support group of fellow co -dependents to help Renfield realize he is wasting his eternity on someone who has, literally, no life beyond taking them. Hoult truly is the heart of this film because Renfield, by all means, is not a heroic character but he learns to be, which gives the film a sense of hopefulness; as if we all can go from being the absolute worst to kind of decent. His dynamic with Awkwafina as two flawed people trying to do better by others grounds a film that bends towards the absurd.
From laughingly outlandish gore to a surprising amount of fight sequences thanks to Tedward Lobo and his gang of lobos, the movie is way better and more detailed than its trailer inclines. This movie is campy, funny, outrageous, and strangely grounded, all once. It can be Tarantino levels of deranged violence with splashes of Sam Raimi´s penchant for gregarious, comic villains. Dracula and the Lobos are dripping in blood and velvet as if it is Rupaul´s Drag Halloween, and all that craziness and quotable snark makes the film sparkle as more than just a dark tale of twisted, Midsommar codependency.
Renfield feels like an artfully funny, cult classic. It is memorable and reactive, which I loved. Amidst a barrage of either serious Indies and comicbook sequels, the movie theater slate can often feel oddly empty like, no movie is big enough to match the grandiosity of action hero leads on their 5th film or small enough to grasp the earthiness of a dimly lit drama where an A-lister does not comb her hair and finds milk triggering to her memories of the day her husband left: both Oscar bait premises if you ask me. The point is Renfield hails to a time way before the pandemic when movie theaters were filled with films that you wanted to see that were stand-alone entertainment. I would watch Renfield again and in a theater any time. This Universal Picture Is Out April 14.
