Renfield is one of those movies that got written off way too quickly. I never even heard about it until I saw it randomly on Peacock. The movie is messy, uneven, and occasionally unsure of what tone it wants to commit to, but underneath all that noise is a genuinely fun, stylish, and surprisingly heartfelt take on the Dracula mythos. And the biggest reason it works at all is Nicolas Cage, but then again, he’s usually the best part of any movie he’s in. Cage walks into this movie like he’s been waiting his entire career to play Dracula and refuses to waste a second of it.
Cage isn’t doing a parody. He’s not winking at the camera. He’s giving a full, committed, operatic performance that feels ripped straight out of a lost 1930s Universal monster film and then filtered through his own unhinged energy. It’s theatrical, grotesque, funny, and legitimately intimidating. Every scene he’s in has a pulse. Every line delivery feels like it was engineered to be GIF-able. It’s the kind of performance that elevates the entire movie around it.
And that’s why Renfield deserved better. The marketing sold it as a quirky horror-comedy, but the movie is actually a character-driven story about toxic loyalty, self-worth, and breaking cycles of abuse, wrapped in a hyper-violent action-comedy shell. It’s not perfect, but it’s far more interesting than the box office numbers ever suggested.
Nicholas Hoult is great as Renfield, playing the role with a mix of exhaustion, sweetness, and desperation that makes the dynamic with Cage land emotionally instead of just comedically. Renfield is a familiar that’s been with Dracula for centuries, whose powers activate when eating bugs. Awkwafina plays a cop who brings a grounded energy the movie badly needs. And when the film leans into its themes instead of its gags, it actually hits something real. When the movie leans into its gags it’s genuinely hilarious, Ben Schwartz makes sure of that.
Is it uneven? Absolutely. Is it trying to be three different movies at once? Yes. But when it works, it really works and Cage’s Dracula is the glue holding the whole thing together.
Renfield isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s entertaining and a surprisingly thoughtful monster movie that deserved better than it got.
