Renfield  ★★★½

CAGE is back baby.

As per his usual pattern, after a couple of throwaway roles, Nicholas Cage gives us something to sink our teeth into.

In 2019 it was Pig and last year The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

This year it’s the hilarious action horror comedy Renfield.

In 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss Cage played a bloke who thought he had become an undead bloodsucker.

Now in 2023 he gets to play Count Dracula himself and boy does he lap up the opportunity.

In single scenes Cage comes across as both threatening and comic as he terrorises his longtime assistant Renfield who is starting to waver in his devotion.

Nicely played by Nicholas Hoult, Renfield is growing tired of his boss’s destructive lifestyle and wanting to sever ties.

In some of the film’s funniest scenes he tells a co-dependency addiction group about the mental health issues being caused by his employer.

Meanwhile Dracula is trying to recover from severe burns and wants young nuns and cheerleaders to feast on rather than the ‘rubbish’ criminal cadavers being brought to him by Renfield.

Bloody and gory as hell, Renfield pushes the audience through this by always having a comic edge to the violence.

Hoult and Akwafina, as a cop who teams up with Renfield, have nice chemistry but there is still no doubt this is Cage’s film.