‘Renfield’, blood for Nicolas Cage

The thousand faces, and adhesive toupees, of Nicolas Cage are still in top form and add another unleashed character to the long list of cinematographic exploits of the popular actor, whose prolific filmography moves between the absurd, the delirium and the cult with astonishing ease. Undoubted are his acting skills in front of the camera, but lately he has gained more prominence, and whole, the resounding self-confidence of him to embody any imaginable role, without corsets, hard and to the retina. There are no barriers to the creative challenge of becoming anything. Recalling ‘Vampire Kisses’, a film from 89 thrashed by critics and adored by the fatal fans of the Oscar-winning star, where he became a deranged bloodsucker from walking around the house, he goes a step further, in keeping with his artistic seniority, putting himself in the skin of Dracula himself. However, it should be noted, the true protagonist of the story is his human assistant, Renfield, a dragged vassal who cunningly defends in the frame Nicholas Hoult, whose “bear witness” of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is movie history . The direction of the film, one of the most anticipated releases of the year by fans of fantasy, is the work of the head of the best audiovisual adaptation of Batman of all time, Chris McKay, the look behind the hilarious ‘Batman: The LEGO Movie ‘.

Hoult, who already played the living dead in ‘Memoirs of a Teenage Zombie’, displays his charms playing the famous slave of the Prince of Darkness, in charge of providing victims to bleed the myth created by Bram Stoker. After several centuries giving everything, it is time for a change of scenery, but breaking the chains is not an easy task. The toxic relationship, of total dependency, between Renfield and his master, the grotesque Dracula, king of the night, as histrionic as can be imagined in the hands of Cage, is the engine of a black comedy with plenty of action sequences, conveniently peppered with gore. of colors. Some horror is not lacking in a film with lurid photos, something formally disjointed, which seeks the complicity of the young audience and the purists of the genre. The moments in which the monster bursts onto the scene give play to the already eternal Cage, delighted to assume his role as a living meme with the incombustible ability to captivate a dedicated audience. The show adapts to the times, crushing ideas with more disorder than a concert and takes flight as the tangle progresses, drenched in frivolity. The show hardly disappoints with respect to what it promises, looking at itself in ‘What we do in the shadows’, a must-view, series and movie. In fact, the more naughty it feels, the better it works.

Sold as a direct sequel to ‘Dracula’, by the master Tod Browning, released in 1931, with Bela Lugosi totally devoted to the vampiric cause in his role as the bloodthirsty Count – a fact that had to make Cage’s teeth long at the beginning of the project -, watch out for other names that appear in the main credits of the film: Ryan Ridley (‘Rick & Morty’) signs the script, based on an original idea by Robert Kirkman (‘The Walking Dead’). The beginning of the film conveniently pays homage to the Universal classic and puts the viewer in a situation. Cage meets expectations, in his own sauce, ideal as a narcissistic bloodsucker who does not hesitate to humiliate his slave in order to get away with it. After the failure of Tom Cruise’s ‘The Mummy’, the spearhead of the Dark Universe project, when the studios intended to create their own MCU with great horror film icons -now a joke-, ‘Reinfeld’ opens a new path and he opts for claiming a frankly healthy B-series spirit. It’s not something to get excited about, there are moments that seem half-cooked, but it is a breath of fresh air on the punished billboard.