nypost.com
13.04.2023 / 21:25
‘Renfield’ review: Nicolas Cage’s vampire movie belongs in a coffin
Stuck in a movie theater seat watching “Renfield” plod along, the answer is a resounding meh.As the Count from “Sesame Street” would say, “‘Renfield’ gets TWO stars! Ah, ah, ah.”Cage — whose career has become so goofy he recently played a parody version of himself who gets kidnapped by a Spanish drug lord — is as funny and self-aware as the evil old vampire. Crazy, it would seem, has become Cage’s new normal. But don’t come looking for a wacky sendup of the story in the vein of Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.” It’s actually not even as hilarious as that director’s much-worse 1995 movie “Dracula: Dead and Loving It,” and outside of a few basic details the film has little to do with Bram Stoker’s book.“Renfield,” directed by Chris McKay, has more in common with the (far better) “Zombieland” series, with high-body-count action sequences, quick-cut comedy and an unlikely, socially awkward hero. That would be Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), Count Dracula’s beleaguered “familiar,” who has been gifted an unnaturally long life in exchange for bringing the vamp fresh victims.