Field of Screams

For several weeks now, I'd been looking forward to the release of the movie Renfield -- more than I should have, because honestly, how good could such a ridiculous-looking movie actually be? Pretty good, it turns out. At least good enough to fulfill its gonzo promise.

Renfield centers on the lackey of the vampire Dracula. (Actual Renfield; actual Dracula.) The pair have been making their way around the world for more than a century, and now are setting up in modern day New Orleans. Renfield has been in group therapy, struggling to find the nerve to stand up to his master. When he helps a local cop survive an assassination by a crime syndicate, he gets a taste of being a hero and decides his moment has come. Needless to say, Dracula will not be spurned so easily.

This movie comes from an appropriately anarchic creative team who seem tailor-made to have taken this on. It's directed by Chris McKay, who led The Lego Batman Movie in its fizzy mix of fast-paced humor and loving parody. The script is by Ryan Ridley, from a story by Robert Kirkman; Kirkman has a bucket of credits, but the most apropos here is Invincible, a wild blend of violence and genre retooling.

All of that, in a nutshell, is Renfield: a delightfully over-the-top tale of gore and humor. Remarkably, it has a lot of story crammed into its tight 93 minutes. I was expecting nothing more than you'd get from a one-sentence description, but there are actually several interwoven threads that are paid off in the end. And yet it's not so dense that it gets in the way of the main attraction here: the comedy.

The casting of Renfield is superb. Nicholas Hoult is the title character, and in the tradition of Mad Max: Fury Road and The Menu, Hoult is able to play a total freak of a character with surprising authenticity. Awkwafina has really carved out a niche over several movies where she somehow gets to be a "straight man" and the "comic relief" at the same time, and that's on display again here. Scene-stealer Ben Schwartz gets laughs as the non-threatening son of the very threatening crime lord (played by the always-intense Shohreh Aghdashloo). And yes, of course, there's Nicolas Cage as Dracula. He's let loose to be his most Cage-y, most deranged, most unlike any human would actually behave -- and that's absolutely perfect for this character in this movie.

With insane fight choreography, snappy one-liners, and what feels like half the movie's budget devoted to gore, Renfield is escapist fun. I give it a B+. If you're a fan of Invincible or The Boys, I think it will be right up your alley.