This horror comedy skews too hard into the super hero action and not enough Nicolas Cage.

The film which was released in 2022 and follows Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula and his slave like familiar, Renfield. Dracula is played by a perfectly cast Nicolas Cage, and Renfield is played by Nicolas Hoult. Hoult is suitably weird and twitchy, but wisely doesn’t try to out-weird Cage. The film introduces them in black and white footage made to replicate the look and feel of the 1931 Universal monster film Dracula. We then flash forward to modern day where an immortal Renfield is helping immortal Dracula find people to eat. It’s a toxic relationship and the dynamic these two actors create is absolutely hilarious. They play the dynamic from the book with a twisted side eyeing quality that really captures the humor of the situation.

When Dracula is almost killed by a group of vampire hunters, he ends up fried to a crisp in the sunlight, and must recover in solitude. The make up work on Cage as an imperious vampire with the complexion of overcooked bacon is very effective and very funny. But this leaves Renfield on his own for the first time in years. He stumbles upon a brave police officer named Rebecca played by Awkwafina.

I like Awkwafina. She is an absolute revelation in The Farewell. She’s fun in Crazy Rich Asians, and she delivers an A+ Danny DeVito impression in Jumanji. She’s good here, but what is she doing in this movie? Her character is all about putting a crime family in prison as revenge for the death of her police father. Her story is about legacy and justice. It has nothing to do with a camp vampire creating a hostile work environment for his put upon familiar.

This is where the move starts to lose me. It is two movies mashed together, and I only really liked one of them. Renfield joins Rebecca in order to take down this crime family. The crime family is so nasty and silly that they only further highlight the divide between the two movies on display here. The crime family drama is rote and too familiar. It’s not funny. It’s not dramatically engaging. It really just serves to give Renfield superhero action scenes.

That’s right, in this movie Renfield has super powers. Whenever he eats a bug he gets super strength, speed, and endurance. There are many scenes of his literally tearing people limb from limb and creating buckets of gore and viscera in the process. It’s meant to be funny and sometimes it is. But it’s not that interesting. I’ve seen that before. I haven’t seen Dracula get called into group therapy to work on his relationship with his sniveling familiar.

Sadly that is the story that gets sidelined. Dracula and Renfield’s delightful and interesting dynamic takes a backseat to gory action and cop movie cliches. Nicolas Cage is only in about a third of the movie. Which is sad because the best part of the movie is sidelined.

The movie wasn’t a waste of time. I don’t regret watching it. There was some great stuff. It just got pushed to the side in favor of action and cliches. It feels like a metaphor for modern film. An interesting and funny story about two people in a toxic relationship gets pushed to the side for cliches and violence.

It’s half a cup of tea. C+