“I deserve happiness,” says the young man, his voice quavery but resolute, carefully reciting the words he’s learned from self-help books. “I will no longer tolerate abuse.”
The abuse in question is not the typical sort, however; this handsome fellow in the pastel sweater is Robert Montague Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), the familiar to Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage), which means his job is to fetch fresh bodies, clean up the mess left behind by bloodsucking and deal with the boss’ foul moods for all eternity. It’s a pretty lousy job, which is why Renfield has shown up at a weirdly greenlit Dependent Relationships Anonymous meeting in contemporary New Orleans, hoping to shake free of the destructive patterns in his life.
This is the premise behind Chris McKay’s horror comedy “Renfield,” and as premises go, it’s a good one; there’s plenty of scope for laughter in the mashup of classic monsters and support group culture. (It’s a great running gag that when Renfield tells the group of his dream that the boss “won’t grow to full power,” they all think it’s a metaphor.) But while there are indeed some giggles in “Renfield,” you watch it wondering why it isn’t funnier, and waiting for Cage to stagger back on screen, sporting teeth that look like hell’s picket fence and looking weirdly confused, like a few script pages maybe got lost.
