Renfield sucks the fun out of What We Do in the Shadows’ formula

“I’m a codependent.” This line is emphatically and often thrown out, in voiceover and from multiple characters, in Chris McKay’s ineffectual, tongue-in-cheek vampire splatter comedy. Renfield. The confessional is part of the movie’s mainline about people recognizing and taking ownership of the monsters that live their lives, but it ends up being a handy reminder of the tawdry pop culture porridge that’s dominated the release schedule in recent years. When it comes to Hollywood, we are all codependents. For every carefully crafted action movie, there’s a few blank superhero jaunts. For every brutally stylistic franchise entry, there are several that don’t take a chance.

And yet, despite the chance that we’re haunted by a collection of sounds and images in the boardroom every time we go to a theater, we still hope that the movies will love us, as we continue to show them love with our hard-earned money. . In some ways, this makes Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) – a doormat of a servant granted eternal life and superhuman combat abilities by Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) – the most recognizable protagonist in Hollywood in ages as he tries to figure out how he escape the mystical grip of his master. But this comparison is also the only thing that makes the film somewhat amusing, and it feels completely coincidental. Sadly, not even Cage can salvage a role that, at least on paper, looks like it could have been fun.

Renfield is bad in a way, too many major studio movies are bad, yet it turns out to be one of the worst examples of a self-reflexive, pop culture-referential modern “property” playing as a hollow imprint of something better. That’s not an abstraction: this $80 million monstrosity is desperately calculated as an attempt to play in the same league as What we do in the shadowsthe vampire mockumentary and subsequent FX series about the everyday lives of creepy bloodsuckers in Wellington and New York.

But where Shadows quickly setting a wry tone by deflating the grandeur of vampire stories, McKay and screenwriter Ryan Ridley (working from a story by The living Dead creator Robert Kirkman) cannot capture either a tone or a central premise Renfield. No performance in this film is serious enough for satire, or operatic enough to push the tone towards camp. Does the story unfold in a world where Dracula is a closely guarded secret? An opened one? A figure thought to be fictional until revealed otherwise? Who’s to say? The question isn’t raised until an hour into the 90-minute runtime, after which each human character has an entirely different reaction to Dracula’s presence, depending on the ill-conceived punchline that appears to be written down in Ridley’s first draft. That is, if the supporting characters are given the luxury of reaction shots at all.

The comedy in it Renfield does not arise from human behavior, but from the inhuman delivery of references to familiar cultural touchstones. This works exactly once, when the film retells the history of Renfield and Dracula through a highly innovative flashback, by Hoult and Cage about Dwight Frye and Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s Dracula, the 1931 Universal classic that cemented the image of vampires in American film. From then on, viewers may even have a hard time recognizing which lines are meant to be jokes. Take, for example, a series of extensive references to ska musicwhere the punchline is someone simply calling the genre with disdain, a bit that would have felt passé in 2016.

Photo: Michele K. Short/universal images

The framing device, of Renfield attending a support group for codependents in New Orleans, has just one joke that dries up the movie and then some: the idea that Renfield’s servitude, in which he was repeatedly involved, nursed Dracula back to health by giving him new victims. delivery while he got little return, can be likened to a toxic relationship. But the problem with using this equation in a tongue-in-cheek way is that it’s not really an equation to begin with – the way in which, shall we say, Spring street 22 draws similarities between the conventions of dating and two undercover detectives who must negotiate a breakup, using terms such as “we should be investigating other people”.

When it comes to Renfield and the human members of his group, their issues are literally the same – unrequited adoration for a manipulative narcissist – so even the film’s basic premise is merged into the overarching issue. The people behind it Renfield never any idea how to approach their own material with sincerity. The attempts at ambiguities usually have a singular meaning.

Tyranny of tone and language are not the film’s only problems. The story is similarly half-baked, with allusions to overcoming demons and finding inner strength galore that are merely lip service, rather than expressed dramatically or even comically. When Renfield finds herself in an ongoing crime story – starring Ben Schwartz as a slimy mobster, Shohreh Aghdashloo as his imposing mob boss mother, and Awkwafina as a straightforward cop hot on their heels (a role she plays with over-the-top affections that never match with the material) – a number of fight scenes follow, although they hardly impress.

Renfield’s timid attitude should hilariously clash with his penchant for action that straddles martial arts and breakdance, but that action barely registers with the eye or brain. Where the spoken dialogue is alphabet soup, the images are salad. Each shot is cut within an inch of its life, so that even when something potentially ravishing happens – an example of gory spatter born from lacerated limbs, albeit with the help of horribly subpar digital effects – McKay usually lets it whiz by instead of longer than a fleeting moment about what should be grossly funny.

Photo: Michele K. Short/universal images

The exception is the practical makeup job applied to Cage when Dracula is a rotting corpse at the beginning of the film, desperately needing Renfield’s help. It’s tactile and silly in a commendable way – it feels like Dracula’s tainted, pimpled flesh could melt off his bones at any moment – but nothing in Cage’s embodiment of the character is nearly as gauche. It’s a mostly one-note performance with wide-eyed stares and a lengthy delivery. There is no rhythm in it; not a glimmer of mischief, let alone the kind of explosiveness or unpredictability that keeps fans showing up for Cage movies. Renfield will end in none viral nic cage montagesand that is perhaps the biggest charge.

Hoult has been properly doe-eyed and self-effacing as Renfield – he’s probably the most sincere part of an otherwise cynical project – but he’s the only actor who seems to have been allowed to tap into something resembling a comedic or dramatic soul. He’s also the only one not saddled with dialogue that plays like amateur improv. He’s not grating to look at. That’s the bare minimum for an on-screen actor, but it’s a requirement for almost every other aspect Renfield fails to meet, from its mind-numbing action refusing to indulge in suspense or gross hilarity to the scattered tale of a man finding ways to tell his son of a bitch boss. In that vein, it should be the most recognizable comedy in the world. Instead, it’s just a series of disconnected images strung together by half-baked witticisms that you could stuff into the mouth of practically any other character. The result would feel just as defeated.

Renfield debuts in theaters April 14.