NOSFERATU
(Check out Chris Reed’s movie review of Nosferatu, in theaters Christmas Day. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
For his fourth feature, Nosferatu, director Robert Eggers (The Northman) turns his cinematic attention once again to the supernatural, this time with an adaptation of a story told twice before on the big screen. The first rendition came out in 1922, directed by F.W. Murnau and part of the German Expressionist movement, a marvel of chiaroscuro light and shadow. Then, in 1979, Werner Herzog tried his hand at the tale. Both were versions of Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror novel Dracula, though since Murnau never secured the rights to the book, the names of both the central vampire and the human characters all differ from the original. The 1979 and 2024 iterations keep Murnau’s changes.
This is, then, hardly an unknown narrative. Mysterious, reclusive, undead aristocrat preys on innocents, meets woman with whom he has a mystical connection, and all hell breaks loose. Blood is shed (and drunk), many people die, and in the end the villain is taken down through sacrifice and guile.
Why, then, do we need a new take on Nosferatu? Eggers answers that question right away, courtesy of a deeply unsettling opening sequence that introduces Count Orlok (as yet unidentified) within the dream of our lead, Ellen. Though the lighting and sound design evoke the terror of a nightmare, Ellen’s response to the guttural cries of her stalker is almost sexual, her body shaking in either seizure or ecstasy. There has always been an element of forbidden desire embedded in the submission to a vampire’s (blood)lust. Egger brings that subtext into the full moonlight. We fear that which we crave.
The time is 1838, the place “Germany” (Germany as a unified nation did not exist until a little over 30 years later). An onscreen title tells us that what we now watch is “years later” after that opening vision. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp, Wolf) is married now, to Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult, The Menu), a man whose fortunes are not yet made, and who therefore a little too willingly takes on a task from his employer, Knock (Simon McBurney, Siberia), to travel by horseback to faraway Transylvania, where a client, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, Villains), awaits his arrival to sign the deed to a property in Thomas’s own town.
Ellen, who alternates between melancholy and bouts of hysteria—emotional states that have followed her since childhood—begs Thomas not to go. She senses that the trip is doomed, though her paranormal communications with Orlok have not yet begun anew. She fears that her husband’s physical absence will be impossible to bear. Her longing is as much sentimental as carnal, and though she loves Thomas dearly, he appears somewhat irresolute in the latter department.
Off he goes, and since the film bursts with foreboding—enhanced through the evocative combination of visual and aural landscapes that are Eggers’ stock in trade—there is little doubt that things will not end well. Before Thomas even makes it to the Count’s ruined castle, he happens upon a Romanian village filled with folks who view him with suspicion, not the least because of his destination. After he spies them at night unearthing a corpse in a graveyard, one which they promptly stab through the heart, he wakes up to find his horse (and the villagers) gone.
It’s when Thomas meets the count that the movie truly takes off, Eggers’ hallucinatory approach to this well-trod Gothic tragedy bringing the creepy terror at the heart of Orlok—aka Dracula—to disturbing life. When, later, Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) shows up as noted specialist in the occult Professor von Franz—aka Van Helsing—that actor’s mercurial presence ratchets up the feverish intensity even further. This is a vampire movie unlike any other, where sex and death combine and combust in the most grotesque way imaginable. Even better, Eggers adds fresh details and scenes that makes this interpretation uniquely his own.
All the performers shine, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) and Emma Corrin (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) as the Hardings, friends of the Hutters, and Ralph Ineson (The Northman) as Ellen’s doctor. No one is more vital to this Nosferatu, than Depp, however. Skarsgård is good, though his prosthetics and distorted voice do much of the work, but this is Depp’s breakout role. Her vivid presence makes tangible the awful push-and-pull of taboo appetites. What would you be prepared to die for? Watch and find out.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Focus Features; Robert Eggers; Nosferatu
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