Renfield 4K 2023 Ultra HD 2160p

A comedy about Dracula and his sidekick Renfield. Our Days. The couple is in a co-dependent and toxic relationship: Renfield, a mere mortal, worships Dracula and wants to gain immortality, while the Count mocks him in every way possible, burdening him with slave labor.

Renfield 4K Review
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the infamous Transylvanian Count Vlad Dracula (Nicolas Cage) lures the naive English lawyer R.M. Renfield (Nicholas Holt) into his gloomy castle, captivates his mind with vampiric charm and turns him into an obedient servant. For the next ninety years Renfield faithfully and faithfully serves the immortal master, forgetting about his personal life. Everything changes when the heroes move to New Orleans, where Renfield discovers a 12-step psychological help program for people in co-dependent relationships.

"Dracula." Bram Stoker - one of the most screened novels in the history of modern cinema, which formed in the public consciousness a classic image of the vampire: powerful, cruel and cold-blooded killer. Over the decades, this image successfully evolved: the pale monster from "Nosferatu: Symphony of Terror" slowly but surely transformed into a sexy gothic prince with dictatorial traits. At the turn of the tenth screen vampires finally lost all their bloodthirstiness, turning into plush vegan Cullen - characters from the popular teen franchise "Twilight".

In the twenties, when psychology was finally no longer considered a pseudoscience, the image of the nocturnal bloodsucker from the novel of the century before last resonated less and less with gothic horror and more and more merged with reality. The concept of "energy vampirism" is now a surprise to few, but in the context of Stoker's storyline it seems to be used for the first time. Based on the story of the same name by Robert Kirkman ("The Walking Dead"), "Renfield" not only shifts the main focus of the narrative from the charismatic Transylvanian Count to his seemingly unremarkable servant, but also rethinks the mythology of vampirism in terms of the psychology of the narcissistic victim.

Renfield's character fits perfectly into the symptomatology of a man withering away in a torturous co-dependent relationship, while Dracula himself behaves like a typical manipulative sociopath, keeping his victim on a leash of threats, gaslighting and physical abuse. Renfield gets a glimpse of the dark side of his beloved master (and at the same time, himself) by stepping out of his comfort zone when he first saves rather than takes the life of an innocent man - the brave policewoman Rebecca, played by Aquafina. Renfield feels he has done something truly worthy, after which he decides to follow the classic hero's path.

Paradoxically, from this point on, the movie gradually loses all its charm and allure: the intricate concept of vampirism is replaced by excessive, in some places uncomfortable action. Director Chris McKay ("Future War") hypercompensates for the thrash-comedy genre by staging a repetitive meat grinder with a dozen severed limbs and liters of bloody diarrhea. It's tolerable to watch, but more often than not, it's simply tedious. Comparisons with Elizabeth Banks' recent "Cocaine Bear", "Renfield" cannot stand: McKay's thrash clearly lacks enthusiasm and, oddly enough, imagination.

Thankfully, when the excessive action is put on forced pause, a flying cloud of Nicholas Cage's insane grimace appears on screen - "Renfield" becomes interesting again. Undergoing a revival of his acting career, Cage is predictably hilarious as his villainous majesty, next to whom Renfield himself is forever a quivering creature, albeit one with a successful course of psychotherapy.