When it was announced that Nicholas Cage would be playing Dracula in the film, Renfield, I was sold. Despite my busy schedule with school and planning a tour, I practically had to be restrained from the ticket office. Along with Nicholas Hoult and Awkwafina, Cage and the rest of the crew did not disappoint.
Renfield was a good movie and it would not have taken much for it to have been great. It seemed that this flick had everything going for it in way of production, set design, pacing, and story, however, the dialogue was mediocre. The F-Bomb was overused as an adjective in a way that degraded the characters. Although the selling point of Renfield was its comedic approach, there were only a handful of moments where the dialogue was actually clever or funny. There were a few times, especially in scenes in which Renfield attended his support group, where the jokes delivered and I actually found myself chuckling. This picture could have been elevated significantly had the dialogue had been a little more clever, intentional, or memorable.
All of that being said, this film has more going for it than it has against it. The action scenes were fantastic, with heads exploding and ridiculous gore. The comical, fast-paced fighting sequences could only be rivaled by films like Deadpool and Bullet Train. Renfield and Rebecca (played by Awkwafina) stole the show as a fun and flirty cop/anti-hero duo.
After watching this film, I asked myself the question, what is the relevance of Renfield? The truth is that this film did something that has never been done before. It cast Nicholas Cage as Dracula and that was an excellent decision. It was as if Cage was born for this role.
About Nathan Conrad:
He’s best known as the Nashville-based Hip Hop/Indie Pop emcee Spoken Nerd, but this isn’t your typical rap project. He rhymes playfully at times, singing and/or rapping, juxtaposing his style with real-life situations and subject matter. Occasionally Spoken Nerd will find inspiration in films and will put it into song. With eight full-length albums into his career, the rapper has built a healthy catalog of music, which doesn’t include the number of EPs and singles released. His most recent release is the collaborative effort Grapes, with Juan Cosby.
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