‘Renfield’: Nic Cage Finally Brings Dracula Into The 21st Century—After A Few False Starts

Renfield is a wildly uneven movie, with a must-see element lurking somewhere left of center: Nicolas Cage’s performance as Dracula, the vexing boss to the movie’s re-envisioning of its title character, a disturbed minion in the original Bram Stoker novel. Here Renfield is configured as a hapless demi-superhero trapped in a codependent relationship with a mincingly dismissive Dracula (Cage), who also happens to be the most interesting character in the movie. Cage has cited both his own father’s academic preening and Anne Bancroft’s withering combination of confidence and disgust in The Graduate as inspirations for his performance, which helps to explain why it’s so memorable. 

Another factor could be utter lack of iconic big-screen Draculas (at least in American studio movies) in the 21st century. The ’90s had Gary Oldman’s shapeshifting version in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula; apart from his intense performance, the hairstyling and costumes have their own instantly memorable iconography. Before that, Christopher Lee (a Cage favorite) had a strong run as the character in the ’60s and ’70s (albeit from England, not in American productions). Bela Lugosi, of course, was the indelible image of Dracula for many years before that. It’s not as if the 21st century hasn’t seen multiple attempts to return Dracula to his former glory (and a successfully defanged kiddie version with the animated Hotel Transylvania series). But even in these franchise-obsessed times, the major live-action ones haven’t quite stuck.

Dracula wasted no time returning to movie theaters once the calendar turned into a new millennium. Dracula 2000 was released just under the wire for its insta-dated title in the Christmas season of 2000, and it’s an unnervingly perfect time capsule of many things: Overlit studio shlock that nonetheless maintains a sense of baseline craftsmanship; the terrible state of alternative rock at the turn of the century; and, most prominently, the since-disgraced Weinstein Brothers’ shotgun-spray approach to casting hot-next-thing actors, which here results in an overstuffed ensemble that includes Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting), Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager), since-disgraced Danny Masterson (That ’70s Show), Omar Epps (Love & Basketball), Vitamin C (a bunch of horrible songs), and Sean Patrick Thomas (Save the Last Dance), alongside veteran cred-provider Christopher Plummer as Van Helsing.

Strangely, this doesn’t leave much room for the movie’s actual Dracula; even stranger, he’s played by the one cast member who remains a movie star 22 years later: a young Gerard Butler plays a frequently shirtless, vaguely Eurotrashy Drac here. (Given that he subsequently played the Phantom of the Opera, does this make Gerry Butler our century’s take on Lon Chaney and/or Lon Chaney Jr.?) Perhaps out of deference to Butler’s questionable accent, perhaps out of deference to the cast of thousands, Butler doesn’t do much as the central bad guy here, and it’s not really a case of quiet, lurking menace. The movie has its cheesy charms; Butler’s performance, though, is something of a false start.

The idea of Dracula as a Eurotrashy guy, though, persisted, even grew to the point where Richard Roxburgh, best known as the villainous Duke from Moulin Rouge!, spends the 2004 would-be franchise-starter Van Helsing flouncing around in a ponytail and stringy hair, regarding everyone around him with looks of impatience and disgust. Van Helsing, starring Hugh Jackman as the hunter from the Bram Stoker book, is supposed to be an all-Universal monster mash, but Dracula still looms as the primary antagonist, played by Roxburgh with a new-money hubris that belies the movie’s period setting. This less-than-elegant Dracula would be the uncouth black sheep of any given vampire faction from the Underworld movies, but in the noisy, hectic world of Van Helsing, he’s cock of the walk, albeit in a vaguely joyless way. 

Stephen Sommers clearly loves amping up monster movies into adventure stories a la his Mummy films with Brendan Fraser, but in Van Helsing he neglects to give Dracula any kind of erotic, seductive, or tragic dimension. He’s all too eager to shapeshift into a gigantic bat creature, which robs the character of any man-monster hybridism that can make him so creepy. The movie reserves whatever meager human dimension it possesses for Van Helsing and his lady sidekick Anna (Kate Beckinsale); even Dracula’s eventual dispatching is rather on the curt side.

Van Helsing failed to kick-start an intended Universal Monsters franchise, which makes it part of a rich history of Universal failing to figure out how to capitalize on its glorious horror-picture heritage. A decade later, Universal had another misadventure in franchise-building with its Dark Universe project—a cinematic universe so misconceived that it was never decided whether the 2014 film Dracula Untold was a part of it or not. Seemingly greenlit as a standalone but poised to be grandfathered in at the series’ convenience, the movie in some ways corrects for the shortcomings of the Van Helsing take on Dracula. Rather than a hatefully ruthless supervillain, this Drac, played by Luke Evans, is essentially rewritten as a tragic superhero in an origin story about how Vlad the Impaler became the Dracula we kinda-know today. 

In the process, the movie pre-visions the toothless not-quite-anti-hero likes of Venom or Morbius, which have essentially (though hopefully temporarily) replaced the Universal Monsters in the popular consciousness, just as Marvel quips have replaced regular movie comedies. But Dracula Untold does have some straightforward folktale appeal, as it follows Vlad’s post-battlefield regret turn to righteous familial protection and, eventually, vampiric powers he has assumed to keep his wife and son safe. It’s a surprisingly handsome-looking film with some strong moments of anguish, as when a mid-transformation warrior version of Dracula admonishes his men with superhuman arrogance. Untold nonetheless errs of the side of making Dracula a little too upright, draining both the fear and the sexuality from the character.

Modern studio filmmaking seems particularly ill-equipped to toy with Dracula’s lustier side; maybe they consider that territory covered (or ruined) by the Twilight series. In any event, Renfield continues this trend; even when Dracula craves a “bus full of cheerleaders” for their supposed purity, he repeatedly clarifies that it is not, in fact, a sexual predilection. That’s about as clever as Renfield gets—and a sex-free romance between Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield and a cop played by Awkwafina is about as lusty as it gets. (There’s plenty of violence, almost all played for laughs.) But while Cage plays the most stylized Universal Dracula in years in terms of both performance and often brilliantly grotesque makeup, he’s also the first big-studio, live-action Dracula in ages who has real, human personality. The transplant to modern day doesn’t do much for the movie’s slack comedy, but it does wonders for Dracula as a character, who has grown complacent in the shadows, and irritated at humanity’s unchecked inferiority. His sometimes-offscreen arc involves him working up the ambition to become a world-dominating king, rather than a haughty lurker. 

Cage has so much fun in this role, so effortlessly merges with his initially outlandish makeup and dandified costumes, that you almost wish Universal would give the Dark Universe another shot. Put Cage’s Dracula in other, better movies—have him square off with Ryan Gosling’s supposedly in-the-works Wolf Man, or flash back to his intersection with Frankenstein’s Monster. That probably won’t happen, but at least we should savor that for the first time in a few decades, mainstream filmmaking has a Dracula we can believe in. 

Jesse Hassenger is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com and tweets dumb jokes at @rockmarooned