Renfield

Watching Nicolas Cage finally play Dracula feels less like a casting choice and more like a cosmic inevitability. It’s the role he was seemingly born to play, or perhaps the role he’s been haunting in his sleep since 1989’s Vampire’s Kiss. In Renfield, we find him at the height of his "nouveau shamanic" powers, sporting velvet suits and fingernails that look like they could unzip reality itself. But while the marketing leaned heavily on the Prince of Darkness, the film belongs to his long-suffering familiar, played with a delightful, bug-eating neurosis by Nicholas Hoult.

I watched this on a Tuesday night while trying to assemble a flat-pack bookshelf, and I found that Renfield’s struggle to escape a toxic, soul-sucking relationship resonated far more than any IKEA manual ever could.

The Ultimate Toxic Workplace

The core conceit of Renfield is brilliant in its simplicity: what if the relationship between a vampire and his familiar was just a classic, codependent workplace nightmare? We meet Nicholas Hoult’s titular character in a self-help group for people in abusive relationships. He’s not there to find victims; he’s there to find perspective. He’s spent a century fetching "cheerleaders and innocents" for a boss who literally drains the life out of everyone he meets.

Hoult is fantastic here. He brings a wide-eyed, exhausted charm to a man who has forgotten what it’s like to have a personality that isn’t defined by someone else’s thirst. When he meets Awkwafina’s Rebecca—a traffic cop with a vendetta against the local crime family—the movie shifts into a strange hybrid of a rom-com and a hyper-violent superhero flick. Rebecca is effectively the only person in New Orleans with a pulse and a moral compass, and her "perennially angry" energy acts as the catalyst for Renfield to finally stand up for himself.

The script by Ryan Ridley (of Rick Rick and Morty fame) is sharpest when it’s deconstructing horror tropes through the lens of modern therapy. Watching Dracula gaslight his assistant by telling him, "You’re only as powerful as I allow you to be," is a genuinely clever way to update the Bram Stoker mythos for a contemporary audience that spent the last decade reading about "quiet quitting."

A Splatter-Stick Spectacle

If you’re coming for the horror, you should know that director Chris McKay treats gore like a Gallagher show. This isn't the slow-burn, atmospheric dread of The Witch or Hereditary. This is "splat-stick." The action sequences look like someone threw a hand grenade into a vat of strawberry jam, and I mean that as a compliment.

The film utilizes a surprising amount of practical effects, which is a breath of fresh air in an era of weightless CGI. According to the production notes, the team used over 100 gallons of fake blood, and you see every drop. People are dismembered with serving trays, arms are used as clubs, and there’s a general disregard for human anatomy that feels like a loving tribute to 80s cult classics like Evil Dead II.

Interestingly, Nicolas Cage’s look was heavily inspired by David Bowie’s Thin White Duke era, mixed with a bit of 70s rockstar decadence. The makeup work on him is stellar; as the movie progresses, he transforms from a charred, skeletal husk into a vibrant, terrifying dandy. Apparently, Cage even kept his fangs in between takes to stay in character, which sounds exactly like the kind of professional commitment that makes him a living legend. He also insisted on paying homage to Bela Lugosi, even recreating specific shots from the 1931 original for the film's black-and-white prologue.

Why It Bled Out at the Box Office

Despite the star power and the gore, Renfield struggled to find its footing at the box office, grossing just under $27 million against a $65 million budget. Looking at it now, it’s easy to see why: it’s essentially three different movies fighting for dominance in one 93-minute runtime. One part is a brilliant Dracula deconstruction, one part is a generic police procedural involving a mob family led by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and the third part is a superhero origin story.

The mob subplot, featuring a perpetually manic Ben Schwartz as Tedward Lobo, feels like it belongs in a different film entirely. While Ben Schwartz is always a joy—playing a "try-hard" gangster who just wants his mommy’s approval—the stakes of a New Orleans drug ring feel incredibly small when compared to an ancient, immortal vampire.

However, this "identity crisis" is exactly why I suspect Renfield is destined for cult status. In the current landscape of polished, formulaic franchise entries, there’s something endearing about a movie that is this aggressively weird and messy. It doesn't care about building a "Dark Universe" or setting up five sequels. It just wants to show you Nicholas Hoult eating a decorative spider to gain super-strength so he can decapitate a hitman.

Much like Jennifer’s Body or Event Horizon, I suspect we’ll be talking about this one more in five years than we did upon its release. It captures a specific post-pandemic nihilism—a desire to burn down the old structures (and the old bosses) even if the process is a bit bloody.

Renfield is a high-energy, neon-soaked romp that works best when it stops worrying about its plot and leans into its absurdity. It’s a film about the bravery required to seek a better life, even if you have to wade through a mountain of severed limbs to get there. If you’ve ever felt undervalued at work, or if you just want to see Nicolas Cage chew the scenery until there’s nothing left but splinters, this is your midnight movie. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a bloody good time that reminds me why I still love going to the cinema: sometimes, you just want to see a vampire get told off by a support group.