Renfield reviews praise Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage's performances but say the movie needs higher stakes

gamesradar.com:

Renfield hits theaters in a matter of days, and reviews for the Nicholas Hoult-fronted movie have started to roll in. Hoult plays the title character, the loyal familiar and lackey of Dracula (Nicolas Cage) – but not for much longer. Renfield has been attending a support group for people in toxic relationships, and he's determined to break free from a century of servitude. Add in a budding romance with cop Rebecca (Awkawfina) and trouble from the Lobos, a powerful crime family, and Renfield certainly has his hands full. 

In our own Renfield review, we praised director Chris McKay's "good use of Hoult's droll delivery and the New Orleans locations" and noted that "when Dracula at one point cries 'Let's eat!', you’d do well to get to the cinema and obey his command." As for what other critics are saying about the horror-comedy, we've rounded up a whole bunch of reviews to give you an idea of what to expect from Renfield. 

"With the notable exception of Leigh Whannell's deeply disturbing The Invisible Man, recent attempts to reboot Universal's squad of classic monsters have crashed and burned like the windmill at the end of James Whale’s Frankenstein. But with Tom Cruise's high-pitched shriek still ringing in our ears from the nosediving plane in The Mummy (the metaphor writes itself), Renfield, spun around Dracula's bug-eating familiar, proves there's plenty more mashing yet to be done by these monsters." 

"[Hoult's] best efforts are thwarted by the tired plot mechanics, which minimize the most interesting element, namely the hilariously dysfunctional Dracula/Renfield relationship, and instead emphasize the sort of gangster movie plot that would have seemed stale in a 1930s Warner Brothers film. Not to mention Renfield