While Renfield sees Nicholas Cage play a vampire and a terrible boss, this isn’t the first time the actor has taken on both of these roles in the same movie. Nicholas Cage has had a varied career, to say the least. He has played comic books antiheroes, action movie tough guys, cartoonish comedy protagonists, and even tragic and surprisingly poignant dramatic leads. Cage has taken on a diverse range of characters over the decades.
It is not too shocking to learn that Renfield’s Dracula isn’t the first Nicholas Cage vampire role. However, not only has Cage been a bloodsucker before, he’s specifically played an abusive boss who uses his vampirism as an excuse to mistreat his underlings. Although Cage’s most underrated movie, Vampire’s Kiss, does not have much in common with Renfield in its tone, the plots of the two movies do bear some striking similarities to one another. In both cases, Cage’s character uses vampire movie tropes to address the real-life issue of workplace bullying, an unlikely premise that works surprisingly well in Vampire’s Kiss.
Renfield Sees Cage In Vampire Mode (Again)
In Renfield, the star harnesses a brilliantly campy take on Dracula. In Vampire’s Kiss, which also happens to be Cage’s best horror movie, he plays an unhinged publishing executive who gradually descends into madness after a one-night stand with a vampire. In both movies, seeing Cage ham it up as a goofy take on the mythical monster is a big part of the project’s appeal. However, the way that Renfield and Vampire’s Kiss handle vampirism and its metaphorical implications couldn’t be more different. From Renfield’s trailer alone, it’s evident that vampires exist in the world of the movie, can grant powers to their underlings, and possess supernatural powers.
However, in Vampire’s Kiss, things aren’t so clear-cut. Cage’s character is convinced that he is a vampire, and he acts unhinged and barbaric enough for viewers to believe this is true. However, like American Psycho’s ending calls the veracity of Patrick Bateman’s murder spree into question, the third act of Vampire’s Kiss gradually reveals the disparity between how Cage’s self-proclaimed “vampire” sees the world and what is actually going on around him. Vampire’s Kiss barely implies that its supernatural elements are “real” from the outset. By the end, the movie is pointedly playing up the difference between the delusions of Cage’s character and what is happening around him.
Why Vampire’s Kiss Is Cage’s Most Underrated Movie
Vampire’s Kiss lacks Renfield‘s authentic supernaturalism and is revealed to be a simple story of a man losing his mind, meaning the movie hinges on Cage’s bravura performance. Luckily, Cage carries the movie, a blackly comic predecessor to American Psycho and Fight Club that could have been a tonal mess if not for the actor’s superb central turn. While Nicholas Cage’s take on Dracula will likely be a more broadly comedic and less subtly tragic figure in Renfield, his troubled Vampire’s Kiss character is a surprisingly moving portrayal of privilege wreaking havoc on innocent lives in a doomed search for meaningful connection, making it his most underrated movie.
Why Renfield Will Be Different From Vampire’s Kiss
Already, the action heroics seen in the trailer for Renfield, along with the more conventionally comedic tone and lack of trippy ambiguity, mark the movie out as a campy horror comedy instead of an offbeat, satirical character study like Vampire’s Kiss. Even more so than the comparable American Psycho, Vampire’s Kiss is a strange, discomfiting movie whose meme-able moments jar with its surprisingly bleak portrayal of workplace abuse and its grim, abrupt ending. In contrast, the titular hero gains superpowers from eating insects in Renfield, proving the project is much lighter in tone and less ambitiously confrontational.
For all of its fun scenes and the memorable comedic flourishes of Cage’s performance, Vampire’s Kiss is ultimately a tragicomedy with a brutal dénouement. Vampire’s Kiss has none of Renfield‘s cartoon action heroics nor the sweetness glimpsed in its (admittedly gory) first trailer. In contrast, Renfield will allow Cage to once again play a vampire while, this time, cutting loose and taking the role in a more straightforwardly comedic direction. As a result, Renfield should be able to offer a nod to Cage’s most underrated performance while providing a sillier, more palatable take on vampire stories than the actor’s earlier, underrated outing.
