Campy vampire romp sapped by messy direction

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2023 (1224 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Combining a catchy concept with amiable but underachieving execution, this modern monster flick is basically a workplace comedy with a lunatic amount of blood.

Nicolas Cage (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) chews necks and chews scenery as Dracula, the ultimate bad boss, while Nicholas Hoult (The Menu) is Renfield, his abused personal assistant.

Explaining his gruesome employment situation with a fast pastiche of past vampire movies, from F.W. Murnau to Francis Ford Coppola, Renfield relates how the pair’s cycle of toxicity has crossed continents and spanned decades.

Renfield and the Count are currently lying low in contemporary New Orleans, with Drac building up his strength after a bad run-in with some fearless vampire hunters. Renfield is using the fraction of vampiric power granted him by Dracula to procure fresh bodies, but he’s beginning to think this may be a hostile work environment.

As he’s trolling for victims at a self-help group, Renfield listens to stories about terrible boyfriends and horrible bosses and comes to realize he’s in a codependent relationship.

He’s also inspired by the determination of Rebecca (Awkwafina, the rapper who made her acting breakout in Crazy Rich Asians), a police officer who has vowed to bring down the criminal gang that has half the New Orleans police department in its pocket, even though she’s currently stuck in the traffic unit.

Renfield, newly encouraged to think about his own needs, just wants a normal life. He buys colourful knitwear from Macy’s, he styles his bookshelves, he bakes snickerdoodles. “I am enough, I have enough, and I deserve happiness,” he announces.

Drac, of course, has other ideas. He’s used to getting what he wants, and what he wants right now is not just blood but total world domination.

Hoult brings a lot of floppy-haired English charm to our beleaguered would-be hero, and Awkwafina is generically tough but funny when she gets the chance.

Even the minor parts are nicely cast: Iranian star Shohreh Aghdashloo lends her remarkable presence — and thrillingly low voice — to the portrayal of a New Orleans crime boss, while Ben Schwartz is a good comic counterpoint as her callow screw-up son. (His strategy for evading the cops is to throw kilos of cocaine at their heads.)

Cage, who has dallied with the undead before in Vampire’s Kiss, is totally committed, just vamping and camping it up like crazy here. It’s perhaps fitting that the Dracula for our times is not a melancholy, misunderstood romantic or a dark Nietzschean antihero or a sexy seducer but a whiny, aggrieved, self-pitying narcissist with a flair for showmanship.

And it’s nice that in the vamps-vs.-food showdown, where this genre sometimes likes to be edgy and ambivalent, Renfield is refreshingly pro-human, siding with us poor mortals, despite all our funny little faults.

The movie is cheerfully entertaining, but its promising premise is let down a little by rushed, sometimes overly obvious scripting by Ryan Ridley (Rick and Morty) and uneven, all-over-the-place direction by Chris McKay (The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie). The action scenes, for example, are outrageously gory and strangely jolly — with plumes of blood, ripped-off limbs, literal piles of bodies — but chaotically choreographed and visually confused.

Still, as the newly self-actualized Renfield would say, it is enough, and it has enough, at least for horror comedy fans looking for some light laughs and even lighter scares.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca