RENFIELD
Master And Servant
▸RELEASED OUT NOW!
15 | 85 minutes
▸Director Chris McKay
▸Cast Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina, Nicolas Cage, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Nicolas Cage and Dracula make such an intoxicating combination that it’s a wonder it’s taken this long for someone to put them together.
For all the lip-smacking relish and diabolical campness that Cage brings to Bram Stoker’s legendary bloodsucker, however, it’s his put-upon drudge Renfield who drives this newest iteration. It intially pays due homage to its filmic forebears (most prominently Tod Browning’s 1931 version) before spinning off into its own comic, contemporary and graphically violent universe. Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield, we learn in a breathless prologue, has been happy enough over the years sourcing his master’s human meals in return for a fraction of his vampire powers. With Drac at a low ebb due to a sunlight-related immolation, though, he’s started to query their codependent relationship, a whiff of romance with New Orleans traffic cop Rebecca (Awkwafina) offering a possible alternative to an eternity of servitude.