Rotten Tomatoes Audience Reviewer Take: Nicolas Cage ruined “Renfield”. 20%
Hot Take: Nicolas Cage was the wrong casting choice for Dracula in “Renfield”. 40%
Thesis Statement: “Renfield” is funny as a dark comedy, but the serious moments would have hit harder if Nicolas Cage’s Dracula was less funny, and more scary. 60%
“Renfield” has two tones running throughout the movie: dark comedic bloodfest and a man learning how to leave an abusive relationship. I love “Renfield” as a dark comedy. Most of the jokes come in the form of punchy dialogue or are gross-outs. (The main character eats bugs to gain superpowers.) The action scenes are hyperviolent and insanely gory. I say this with all the love in my heart, it is hard to watch sometimes.
What falls flat are the scenes that are meant to be serious. Scenes that are clearly set up to be a tonal shift end up being caught between too serious to be funny and just funny enough that you end up asking yourself “Should they be joking about this?” Admittedly some of those scenes fall flat because I don’t think this was Nicolas Hoult’s, or Awkwafina’s, strongest performance, but I would actually attribute most of the reason that those scenes don’t work to the portrayal of Dracula, by Nicolas Cage.
Say you’re watching “John Wick”. You’re watching the scene where his wife is getting sicker and sicker. As she passes away, the last gift she leaves her husband is a puppy and a note saying she wanted him to have a companion even after she was gone. And then, as you’re wiping the tears from your eyes, these punkass kids come in and kill the dog. I’d wanna murder them too.
The serious elements in “John Wick” work because they successfully create an emotional response within the viewer that grounds them to the story, despite the ridiculous and overdramatic premise. As the shadow on Renfield’s life, Dracula has the potential to evoke an emotional connection with the viewer. John Wick loved his dog, so the viewers needed to love his dog too. Renfield is terrified of Dracula and wants to get out from under his thumb. This means the viewers also need to be terrified of Dracula so that they can emotionally connect to Renfield as he tries to leave Dracula behind. This is a nuance that, in my opinion, Nicolas Cage fails to deliver.
Consider this quote from Dracula in “Renfield”:
“I use my power for a lot of things, but I didn’t need to use it on you. You were a lawyer who wanted to get rich off a real estate deal. You’re the one who used me. You used my power because you’re a husk. An empty void that nothing can fill. The only thing that gave your life any meaning was my power. The power you used to bring me victims while you pretended to be one yourself. However, I’m the real victim here. I’m the one you swore to protect. And you abandoned me.”
(I took out tonal markers and notations.)
A genuinely scary line that I could see someone in an abusive relationship would say to the person they’re trying to control. Now imagine Nicolas Cage with rings on all fingers, slicked back hair, white face paint, and a glittery suit, slurring these lines at the top of his lungs around a jaw-full of shark teeth. Instead of being in control, he comes across as a kid playing dress-up throwing a tantrum. Still dangerous given the fact that he’s Dracula, but not a puppet-master that holds Renfield’s strings. The movie is chock full of lines like this one where Dracula could have been a terrifying manipulator, but the movie just never gets there because of how Dracula is portrayed.
I would like to say that I don’t think all of this is on Nicolas Cage. I doubt he had much consultation on the costumes or the makeup. However, the Nicolas Cage acting school of being angry and shouty doesn’t lend itself well to the word “control.” And he needed to have control over Renfield and the situation for the audience to emotionally connect with Renfield and root for him to escape, instead of looking at Renfield and going “This guy?”. In every scene he’s in, no matter the context, Nicolas Cage hams it up for the laughs, undercutting serious moments and the overall message of the movie. Based on “Adaptation”, I think it would be possible for Nicolas Cage to pull off the tonal whiplash necessary to play Dracula well, but it would definitely be easier and less against type for a different actor, so my advice would be to nix Nicolas Cage to make a better movie.
I’m not saying this is the only change I would make. To be honest,I think the dialogue was a bit stilted, especially in the serious moments, and the main cast was not giving this movie their all. However, I don’t think it’s as important that the protagonists get their roles as it is the emotional connector. If “John Wick” could make an audience connect to one-face Keanu Reeves, “Renfield” could have done it with a fairly expressive Nicholas Hoult. Dracula just wasn’t as scary as he needed to be for the audience to feel what Renfield was going through.
The tag “Nicolas Cage as Dracula” probably made them most of their money, though, so who’s to say if it really was a wrong casting decision.
