Renfield (2023)

[Athena]

Directed by Chris McKay from a screenplay by Ryan Ridley, based on an original idea by Robert Kirkman featuring characters from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. The film stars Nicholas Hoult as the title character, alongside Nicolas Cage as Count Dracula, with Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz, and Adrian Martinez in supporting roles.

[Shannon L.]

I think it looks like good, silly fun.  I'm looking forward to it.

[Spartan Girl]

Nic Cage as Dracula is enough to hook me in.

[Annber03]

I plan to see this simply because one of the actors from "Ghosts", Brandon Scott Jones, is in this :D. I don't know how big his role will be, but still, always fun to see actors you like on the big screen. 

But yeah, the movie as a whole does look like absolutely bonkers fun, so I'm genuinely curious to see it for that reason as well. 

[SmithW6079]

On 3/31/2023 at 12:14 AM, Annber03 said:

I plan to see this simply because one of the actors from "Ghosts", Brandon Scott Jones, is in this :D. 

Is he the leader of the therapy group? I could not figure out where I knew him from. The voice was familiar, but the modern clothing threw me off.

[Annber03]

2 hours ago, SmithW6079 said:

Is he the leader of the therapy group? I could not figure out where I knew him from. The voice was familiar, but the modern clothing threw me off.

Yep, that'd be him :D. I know what you mean about seeing the cast from that show in modern clothes, it takes a second for me, too :p. 

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 3/30/2023 at 3:26 PM, Shannon L. said:

I think it looks like good, silly fun.  I'm looking forward to it.

I'd seen previews and thought it looked like good, silly fun, too, and planned to see it.  But the other day they showed the red-band trailer and now I'm not so sure--it's much more gory and violent than you'd believe from seeing the regular trailers and TV ads.

I'm not steeped in vampire knowledge.  I've seen Nosferatu, and I remember seeing Dracula with Frank Langella years ago (a friend of mine said in the theater she was in, women were audibly moaning over Langella 😀).  I saw What We Do In The Shadows just out of curiosity, because I'm not into vampires, and adored it.  And the TV series is appointment TV for me. 

I'm gathering that I like my vampires funny and not gory, so I'm now on the fence about Renfield.  I'm disappointed because I really liked the "regular" trailers, and Nicolas Cage seems perfect as a vampire.

ETA:  I'm not anti-violence, and I'm certainly not anti-swearing.  But I like my violence to be more mayhem than brutal:  shooting up a tea house with automatic weapons with dozens of bodies just falling or flinching then falling is thrilling to me, but I really don't like more realistic violence or any torture of any sort.  And I know that's just me.  But I'm bringing this up because I saw RRR without realizing the amount of torture in it, and might not have gone had I known.  I was definitely going to go to Renfield when it looked to be bonkers fun, but that might not be an accurate description.  I still love the scene of Cage hovering above that meeting and the leader saying something like, "Okay, so we're clearly not dealing with just narcissism here."  Maybe I'll just watch that over and over.

Edited April 6, 2023 by StatisticalOutlier

[AngieBee1]

Fun film, but the premise is very slight. The 90-minute runtime works due to there not being much story there. Nicholas Hoult is a delight and Nic Cage brings the right amount of crazed camp

[Cotypubby]

It's fun, but I wish there was more of Dracula and Renfield and less of the stupid mob family subplot! Every time it cut back to that plot, the film dragged.

It is super super gory, for those who were wondering.

[SmithW6079]

27 minutes ago, Cotypubby said:

It is super super gory, for those who were wondering.

That's a shame. That's going to be a pass for me, then. 

[Annber03]

Just got back from seeing this. It was indeed bonkers fun :D. Hoult was hilarious throughout, oh, my god, there were so many moments with him that just cracked me up, and he and Cage played off each other perfectly. And Cage was clearly having a total ball playing Dracula, he brought a real old-school presence to the character that made him entertaining and genuinely creepy - there were a couple moments with him that actually made me flinch a little. Everyone looked like they had a lot of fun with their roles in this movie, honestly. 

I also loved everything with the therapy group. And Hoult and Awkwafina's interaction was a nice contrast to his interactions with Cage. 

Yeah. I enjoyed this, it was a fun way to spend an hour and a half or so. 

5 hours ago, Cotypubby said:

It is super super gory, for those who were wondering.

It is, indeed, but in a very cartoonish way much of the time (not meant as a criticism, either, just that the over the top of it all is kind of the point :p). 

[Milburn Stone]

On 4/14/2023 at 9:40 PM, Annber03 said:

It is [super gory] but in a very cartoonish way much of the time (not meant as a criticism, either, just that the over the top of it all is kind of the point :p). 

I agree with this description. If you told me I would enjoy a movie with this much blood and gore, I would have said you were crazy, but the gore is so over the top that it becomes a source of amusement. It's like the movie issued itself a challenge to take as a benchmark the goriest movie ever made to that point, and then outdo that by a factor of 100. They clearly had fun rising to that challenge, and once I got what was really going on, I had fun seeing how they'd do it.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Milburn Stone

[kiddo82]

On 4/14/2023 at 5:31 PM, Cotypubby said:

It's fun, but I wish there was more of Dracula and Renfield and less of the stupid mob family subplot! Every time it cut back to that plot, the film dragged.

It is super super gory, for those who were wondering.

I had a lot of fun with this.  Like Cocaine Bear this is a great example of a movie knowing what it wants to be, leaning into it, and being successful at it.  That said, I agree that I wish they had done something different with the mob subplot.  It's a shame because I love both Shohreh Aghdasloo and Ben Schwartz but it did take away from the best parts of the film.

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 4/21/2023 at 8:49 AM, Milburn Stone said:

I agree with this description. If you told me I would enjoy a movie with this much blood and gore, I would have said you were crazy, but the gore is so over the top that it becomes a source of amusement.

Well, the scheduling stars aligned and I took it as a sign I should see the movie; I caught the last showing in my area.  It was indeed as gory as the red-band trailer indicated, but was cartoonish enough that I was okay with it.  There's no doubt what I was seeing was fake, unlike the torture in RRR (or torture in any movie, actually).  I was into it enough that I was cheering when the arms got ripped off one guy and were being used as weapons by others, including as an impaling device.

I didn't realize Awkwafina would have such a big role.  I like her.

[ShadowHunter]

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and just in time since this has stopped playing in my area already/ I think this movie will do better on streaming. It was fun and gory so I had a good time with it. It does have some issues such as the cop and gang plot. While I don't hate that part the way others do and feel it ties in it does take time away from more Vampire stuff we could be getting. This didn't do well and neither did the Vampire movie The Invitation last Summer. Invitation had a smaller budget at least. 

[Spartan Girl]

Finally caught this on Peacock. I do love a good horror comedy. The gore was over the top, but so was Zombieland. Poor Hoult has a habit of playing second banana in various movies, so of course he winds up playing Dracula’s bitch.

Say what you must about Nic Cage, he goes into a part with zero fucks to give, and he was clearly loving every minute of this. I had to laugh at Renfield’s realization that a welcome mat counted as inviting him in.

“Thank you, Wiccan Tumblr.” 😂😂😂😂

LMAO that they basically threw the whole kitchen sink to kill Dracula at the end. But Renfield was right: he does keep coming back, so it’s better to be thorough.

Using Dracula’s blood to bring everyone back kind of feels like a cop-out. So…is the support group all vampires now?

Edited June 11, 2023 by Spartan Girl

[Annber03]

48 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Using Dracula’s blood to bring everyone back kind of feels like a cop-out. So…is the support group all vampires now?

I had a feeling that part would be rather divisive among people who saw this movie, yeah. I personally liked it, 'cause I liked the therapy group so much and all, so it made me happy (and I loved Mark talking in haunted tones about the stuff he'd seen :p). But I can definitely see where others would have the same take you did, yes. 

[Spartan Girl]

9 hours ago, Annber03 said:

I had a feeling that part would be rather divisive among people who saw this movie, yeah. I personally liked it, 'cause I liked the therapy group so much and all, so it made me happy (and I loved Mark talking in haunted tones about the stuff he'd seen :p). But I can definitely see where others would have the same take you did, yes. 

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they were brought back, but without a clear explanation on whether Dracula’s blood brings them back to normal or as vampires (like other shows do) made it feel like a cop-out.

[DoctorAtomic]

This movie was way better than it had any right to be. I enjoyed it so much. I thought the theme of co-dependency and dealing with a narcissist was a clever theme. 

I think they could have trimmed the crime subplot just a little to get a flashback in with Renfield and Dracula. 

I totally lost it when Renfield was in the cafe and he looked at the nuns and then out the window a bus full of cheerleaders rolled by. 

The gore played to me like a graphic novel or comic book. Preacher did that a lot. Some of the shots were almost panels. 

[Annber03]

1 hour ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I totally lost it when Renfield was in the cafe and he looked at the nuns and then out the window a bus full of cheerleaders rolled by. 

LOL, I loved that part, too. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me..." XD. 

[StatisticalOutlier]

20 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I totally lost it when Renfield was in the cafe and he looked at the nuns and then out the window a bus full of cheerleaders rolled by. 

I don't know anything about vampires.  Was he thinking they would be a delicious buffet?  Would a bus of cheerleaders be somehow "tastier" than a bus of regular people?  More nutritious?

Wouldn't the nuns be wearing crosses, and aren't they bad for vampires?  Or do the work only if they're being held upright in front of a vampire's face?

(Obviously I enjoyed this movie on a very superficial level, but I'm not against rectifying my ignorance.)

[DoctorAtomic]

The joke was that Dracula listed out a very specific group of people to Renfield, and then they all showed up in that order in the cafe. 

Prior to that he was saying that the more 'innocent' the victim helps him recharge faster.