Renfield hits theaters in a matter of days, and reviews for the Nicholas Hoult-fronted movie have started to roll in. Hoult plays the title character, the loyal familiar and lackey of Dracula (Nicolas Cage) – but not for much longer. Renfield has been attending a support group for people in toxic relationships, and he's determined to break free from a century of servitude. Add in a budding romance with cop Rebecca (Awkawfina) and trouble from the Lobos, a powerful crime family, and Renfield certainly has his hands full.
In our own Renfield review, we praised director Chris McKay's "good use of Hoult's droll delivery and the New Orleans locations" and noted that "when Dracula at one point cries 'Let's eat!', you’d do well to get to the cinema and obey his command." As for what other critics are saying about the horror-comedy, we've rounded up a whole bunch of reviews to give you an idea of what to expect from Renfield.
Total Film – 4/5
"With the notable exception of Leigh Whannell's deeply disturbing The Invisible Man, recent attempts to reboot Universal's squad of classic monsters have crashed and burned like the windmill at the end of James Whale’s Frankenstein. But with Tom Cruise's high-pitched shriek still ringing in our ears from the nosediving plane in The Mummy (the metaphor writes itself), Renfield, spun around Dracula's bug-eating familiar, proves there's plenty more mashing yet to be done by these monsters."
The Hollywood Reporter
"[Hoult's] best efforts are thwarted by the tired plot mechanics, which minimize the most interesting element, namely the hilariously dysfunctional Dracula/Renfield relationship, and instead emphasize the sort of gangster movie plot that would have seemed stale in a 1930s Warner Brothers film. Not to mention Renfield constantly gobbling down insects to gain super-strength like some demented Marvel character. Forget the action/horror/comedy stuff. All you want to see is Dracula and Renfield sitting in a room together and talking."
Collider – B+
"To absolutely no one's surprise, McKay seemingly allowed Cage near-full freedom to be as Cage-y as he wanted with this project, and the result is a hypnotic, Technicolor, over the top Dracula who anchors the film’s silliness with Cage’s signature brand of expressionism. There’s no question that Cage knows how to command a scene, and letting him loose on Renfield's New Orleans feels like a long time coming for someone with a penchant for taking on the strange and unusual."
Variety
"One of the many lures of the vampire genre is that it operates in close spiritual proximity to death. But in Renfield, with its leaping, limb-tearing, slo-mo-and-back fight scenes that are like something out of a more splatterific Kick-Ass, nothing about death is particularly permanent. The blood spurts and flows – it's a very fluid movie. And the rules turn out to be fluid too. The grip of a Dracula film was once linked to the prospect of a stake being plunged through Dracula’s heart (the finality of it), but in Renfield there is no stake. And there's nothing much at stake."
Guardian – 3/5
"This may be all good clean comedy-horror fun, but more unintentionally stomach-turning is Renfield’s carefree depiction of gun violence, in a period when real-life US shooting deaths are soaring. Gun massacres are fine here, but snogging? Not so much. In fact, Renfield is so coy that romantic leads Awkwafina and Hoult barely even hold hands. "Don't make it a sexual thing," is Dracula’s prim instruction, after requesting a busload of cheerleaders to feast on, and, as usual, Renfield meekly complies."
IndieWire – C-
"Nicolas Cage as Dracula? Brilliant. Nicholas Hoult as his simpering but sweet lackey? Genius. These are the bones of an inspired action comedy, but [Ryan] Ridley and [Robert] Kirkman's unwieldy script – one either incoherent from the start or chopped into a mess during the final edit – hobbles Renfield from the start."
Deadline
"Yes, the filmmakers could have lost some of the relentless bloodletting, and gone more with the humor in terms of maintaining a more even tone, but it is still a lot of fun, thanks especially to Hoult who is perfectly cast here, and of course Cage who, no shock, nails this role. Awkwafina deadpans her way through it all in great style, and the others try to up the ante with more one-dimensional parts, though Brandon Scott Jones as Mark who leads the self-help group really scores in his few scenes of encouragement."
Renfield arrives on the big screen on April 14. For more viewing inspiration, check out our guide to the rest of this year's most highly anticipated movie release dates.
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