Renfield film review — Nicolas Cage’s Dracula steals the steroidal show

Who beyond an unknown Hollywood dentist will ever know the truth of Renfield, the tireless new horror comedy in which Nicolas Cage plays Dracula? Did the actor really have his teeth shaved to better accommodate the dentures, as per reports? It speaks to the berserker devotion for which Cage is famous that he might have even entertained such a thing for an antic bit of fluff whose most compelling reason for being is exploiting the intellectual property of backers Universal.

It also says something about Cage that here we are, discussing him for an entire first paragraph when he isn’t even the headliner. In fact, that is Nicholas Hoult, cast in the title role of this knockabout adventure for Dracula’s loyal familiar. The period is the present and, with the count holed up in New Orleans, his guilt-ridden sidekick is eyeing the exit. Tormented by his monstrous boss, he resolves to make a fresh start at a self-help group of codependents, leaving with a garlic bulb of affirmations.

That’s it, that’s the joke, as internet parlance would have it. And that’s the film as well, a one-gag wonder director Chris McKay (The Lego Movie) somehow stretches to 93 minutes. (Usually, freeze-frames are a stylistic choice, not a means to inflate the running time.) The best moments are also the most obvious, Hoult’s timid English ghoul playing straight man to Cage’s preening narcissist. Less fun are the frantic diversions that pad the movie: a crime family subplot with a miscast Awkwafina as crusading cop, complete with splattery fight scenes.

As Cage and his steroidal panto remains the star attraction, you sense the creative process largely stalled at agreeing his fee. Still, the role represents the closure of a professional circle. Back in 1988, it was another lurid tale of bloodsucking, Vampire’s Kiss, that saw Cage step most dramatically from generic male lead to Hollywood curio. For that film, he ate a live cockroach on-screen. So now merely shaving his teeth? That is personal growth.

★★★☆☆

In UK and US cinemas from April 14