Schreck the Third

Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024/2025)

You need balls of steel to remake a film property which has been engrained in popular culture for over a century. For Robert Eggers, Nosferatu (2024) has always been a passion project. It took fifty years for Werner Herzog to craft Nosferatu the Vampyre, his own personal take on F.W. Murnau's German Expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, and now, it's been almost as long since then for Eggers.

Eggers's The Witch (2015) was one of the greatest film debuts from the last decade and was a classic in its own right in the folk horror canon. He defied the dreaded sophomore slump with the Lovecraftian follow-up The Lighthouse (2019). While journos turned on The Northman (2022) with culture war think pieces, the Viking revenge saga ended up as your host's best film of 2022. All in all, these films cemented Eggers as an important auteur. Therefore, his revision of Nosferatu made it an eagerly anticipated title for many cinephiles. Now that it's out, the all important question rears its head: is it any good? Yes, but it's not without some serious flaws, however.

Arguably Eggers's greatest strength is his obsessive ability to bring verisimilitude to all his films. His history as a production designer explains this and shines through with his latest film. Nosferatu is without a shadow of a doubt a stunningly detailed film. From the costumes, sets and props, the film is visually sumptuous and mesmerising. The sequence where a horse-drawn carriage travels to Orlok's castle is like a mental sequence playing out in the mind of every gothic horror aficionado brought to life.

Eggers's Nosferatu has a distinctively different atmosphere from its predecessors. Whereas the previous two, which were inherently European in style, or to be more accurate, German, Eggers's version has the look and feel of a Hollywood production. That's not a slight at Jarin Blaschke's beautiful and almost monotone cinematography, but it does signify this is a more conventional beast. Delving deeper, both Murnau's and Herzog's films look far more natural, despite various camera and effects trickery (e.g. the use of slow motion and negative photography) Eggers's film, while gorgeous is stylised, controlled and artificial in contrast. It's far closer to what Francis Coppola attempted with his film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).

The most unique aspect of this updated Nosferatu, which separates it from previous versions, is the shift in making Lily Rose Depp's character, Ellen, the central protagonist. The emotional and psychological depth of the film, chiefly stems from her. The prologue shows her summoning an entity to rescue her from despair and loneliness. No surprise who answers her crying pleas from the darkness. The result is her sleepwalking and sharing a psychic bond with the film's monstrous villain.

Fast forward a few years and Ellen is newly wed to junior realtor Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), which ultimate triggers the familiar plot of the film. Nosferatu is essentially a love triangle. There's a complexity to Ellen's character which demands a lot from Depp. A young woman both attracted and reviled by the undead antagonist. A sexual woman repressed by the conservative standards of the nineteenth century.  Depp claims she was inspired by Isabelle Adjani's performance in Possession (1981), who coincidentally played the heroine in Herzog's remake. It's a disturbing performance by the young actress, as you alarmingly witness her convulsing or being possessed. Thus, it results with the film being more sexually explicit than before.

However, the focus on Ellen does have some adverse affects on the rest of the film. Plot points, particularly those in the second act, feel neglected to a certain degree. Thomas's eventual escape from the castle and his journey home are both rushed, while the introduction of the film's Van Helsing figure, Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) comes too late into the film, although his eccentric levity is most welcome in the film. The Hardings, friends of the Hutters are flat characters; particularly Aaron Taylor-Johnson's pantomime acting as Freidrich, while their two children Clara and Louise (possibly referencing silent era stars Clara Bow and Louise Brooks) are there to foreshadow a particular scene later in the film. If you're at all familiar with the two previous versions of the film, then you're aware of how devastating the plague is upon the fictional German city of Wisburg. Here, it's surprisingly fleeting.

As a result of these issues, the pacing does very much drag at times. And so, as beautifully lavish as Nosferatu is, it does have a touch of the by-the-numbers-Jane-Austen-costume-drama spirit about it at times. Thankfully, Willem Dafoe's performance, along with Simon McBurney's utterly insane Herr Knock manage to keep it entertaining and interesting.

Bill Skarsgård's Orlok is distinctively different to the fairy tale monster played by Max Schreck and the existentially sullen Klaus Kinski. This is a different beast altogether, with a more muscular build and a deeply guttural masculine voice. While Skarsgård's Orlok did look like how I would imagine a zombie version of Jim Carrey's Dr. Robotnik would be, I did get use to him over the course of the film. Also, I wasn't too bothered by the moustache, as Bram Stoker's novel has always described Dracula as sporting one. Really liked Orlok's attire in the film. He definitely looked like he was dressed from an even older era than the rest of the cast members in their corsets and carrick coats. Interestingly, Skarsgård's Orlok behaves far differently to Schreck's and Kinki's portrayals. The revised Orlok is best described as the mentally abusive ex, as evident in this choice bit of dialogue:

Count Orlok: So you wish me to prove my enmity as well? I will leave you three nights. Tonight was the first. Tonight you denied yourself, and thereby, you suffer me to vanish up the lives of those you love.

Ellen Hutter: Denied myself? You revel in my torture.

Count Orlok: Upon the third night, you will submit, or he you call your husband shall perish by my hand.

Ellen Hutter: No!

Count Orlok: Till you bid me come shall you watch the world become as naught.

Despite its faults, Nosferatu makes amends with an enjoyable hunt for Count Orlok where the pace drastically picks up, with an excellent theme from composer Robin Carolan that reflects it. Of course, there's the incredible final moments of the film with a closing shot that before the closing credits that won't leave the memory anytime soon. Ultimately, Nosferatu ends on a positively high note.

According to Eggers, an extend cut of the film will be released when it becomes available on Blu-Ray and 4K UHD. Not sure how the additional material would benefit, considering the issues in the second act, but it will be interesting to see how different this version will be from the theatrical release. Perhaps this new cut might add further development to the various subplots.

If this was made by any other director not named Robert Eggers, I doubt I would be this critical. His three previous films were in a different tier, in my opinion. Regardless, I still found Nosferatu overall enjoyable.