Nosferatu

Vampires are all fun and games until they want to suck your blood and drive you insane, something our protagonists are forced to learn the hard way.

A new take on an old story that started with Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, Nosferatu, itself a loose remake of the 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, takes place in the 1800s and follows Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) as she becomes inexorably linked to the ancient evil that is the vampire lord known as Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). Traveling to Orlock’s Transylvanian castle to close a lucrative deal for the sale of another manor overseas, Ellen’s husband, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), is soon swept up in a harrowing series of events that become progressively more terrifying and dangerous the longer he’s kept from returning home. Eventually dragging more and more people into his dark dilemma, including a wealthy shipbuilder by the name of Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a seemingly crazed philosopher named Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe), as well as his wife, Ellen — the subjugation of whom is the main reason behind Orlock’s sudden relocation — Thomas makes failed attempt after failed attempt to overcome the Count’s insidious influence, only to fall prey before a man-creature who can instantly ruin the lives of any who cross his path, whether it be man, woman, or child. With no easy solutions to their vampiric problems, it isn’t long before Thomas, Ellen, and the rest of our protagonists are forced to face Orlock head-on, a fight in which they are ill-equipped to survive. Cue all the blood-sucking and gothic horror.

First things first: Bill Skarsgård is a freakin’ chameleon, and I couldn’t be happier that he has the patience to sit in a makeup chair for hours on end just to creep people the fuck out, with his portrayal only getting better with time after you get over the initial silliness of his mustachioed face and all the epic rolling of his “R’s,” that is. Equal parts creepy and commanding in his performance, Skarsgård immediately becomes the main draw of the film, with Robert Eggers’ dreary color palette and twisted cinematography further proving the director’s eye for evocative imagery isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Throw in a spatter of blood here and a good dose of tension there, and Nosferatu excels on a filmmaking level, despite me not always being happy with how the script, pacing, and overall narrative of this one ultimately played out.

Though I didn’t outright dislike Nosferatu, I found it to be more in line with Eggers’ brilliantly shot but extremely talky The Witch rather than something unhinged and disturbing like The Lighthouse — a direction that bummed me out ever so slightly as I thought this one could have benefitted from more of the latter’s fever dream-inducing energy. And while I cannot deny Eggers’ filmmaking here is impressive, Nosferatu’s slow burn turned slow-paced narrative didn’t always grab me as I had hoped, with some casting choices that I didn’t particularly care for at times (I applaud Depp for the nightmarish physicality she brings to the role, but I didn’t like almost anything else she was doing here otherwise) ensuring Nosferatu lands somewhere in the middle of the pack as one of my least favorite films of Eggers’ growing filmography.

I won’t say this movie is bad because, objectively, it isn’t. But there was something about the plodding nature of the story, uneven pacing, and some questionable casting choices that took me out of the experience outright, with Skarsgård’s Orlock and Eggers’ always impeccable directing being two aspects of Nosferatu that I honestly can’t praise enough. That being said, I did struggle with this one more than I expected, making me want to put a second watch on it just to be sure my less-than-stellar opinion of it still holds. I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly recommend Nosferatu to everyone, but if you like Eggers’ work and want a film that drips tone and terror, then you shouldn’t have too many issues with it by the time credits roll.