Director Robert Eggers’ passion project more than lives up to the legendary original.
Starring Nicolas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Ralph Ineson, Willen Dafoe, and Bill Skarsgaard as the titular vampire Nosferatu (old Romanian for “the afflicted/cursed one”, the vampire is really named Count Orlok), Nosferatu blends 19th-century neo-gothic aesthetics, practical design and makeup, and terrifically terrifying performances to create one of the more horrifying films I’ve ever seen.
The elephant in the room is that the film is a remake of the famous 1922 German silent film starring Max Shreck as Orlok. Eggers’ version keeps mainly the same plot: Thomas Hutter (Hoult) sells a house to Count Orlok (Skarsgaard), Orlok follows Thomas from Transylvania to Wilsburg to sate his desire for Thomas’ wife, Ellen (Depp), Thomas and Ellen look for ways to defeat Orlok, and with the help of the town doctor (Ineson) and an eccentric professor (Dafoe), Ellen Hutter accepts Orlok as her lover to keep him away from his refuge in his coffin until he can die in the sunlight, leaving Ellen to die in Thomas’ arms at daybreak. The whole film adds to the inherent eroticism of vampire fiction and gothic fiction at large, as it comments on desire or lust and how it can lead to the downfall of even the most powerful of creatures.
I appreciate the writing of this movie as well. Not only is the script written entirely in the dialogue of the time (as Eggers does in all his films, they must be as accurate to the period as possible), but the substance of the characters makes sense. Each actor delivers believable performances with noticeable character arcs, each with clear motivations for their actions. None of the characters have the flaws of stereotypical horror movie characters, as they all have the depth and focus of characters from a novel.
Where Eggers’ version differs is the emphasis placed on Ellen. In Eggers’ film, it opens when a desperate Ellen trying to cope with a “bout of melancholy”, calls out into the night for a guardian angel or comforting force to save her, and eventually, Orlok answers. He says that since she summoned him from his eternal slumber, she will join him in spirit, and soon, in flesh. In her desperation, she accepts and is bound to Orlok’s soul, a deal sealed with his shade taking her virginity. Ellen eventually meets and marries Thomas Hutter, which causes her melancholic tie to Orlok to lessen. Orlok then uses a familiar named Herr Knock to summon Thomas to sell him a house in the Hutters’ home of Wilsburg, thus bringing Orlok and the plague he carries to her home while also providing an opportunity to get rid of Ellen’s husband.
Personally, I like the personal touch Eggers adds to the narrative. In the original, Orlok only learns about Ellen by stealing a lock of her hair in a locket that Thomas carried. This makes the film’s focus on Ellen and her sacrifice at the end all the more tragic for the viewer.
This focus on Ellen and her worsening seizures throughout the film also highlights the real historical issue plaguing people of the time of the disbelief given to women’s medical or mental condition, as doctors and friends wouldn’t heed Ellen’s warnings about Orlok invading her dreams, giving her seizures, and causing her to sleepwalk, claiming the cause was that Ellen just misses her husband, Thomas. This shows the sexist discrepancy in care given to women in the Victorian era, which unfortunately persists in some forms into the modern day.
Robert Eggers has always excelled at creating atmospheres in his films through set design, lighting, costumes, dialogue, etc. Whether it be using entirely natural lighting to create a bleak and dreary ambiance to The VVitch (2015) or rough focus and black-and-white filming of The Lighthouse (2019), Eggers never fails to disappoint with his stylistic choices, which continues in Nosferatu. The scale models of the aerial views of Wilsburg, the entirely practical makeup used on Skarsgaard to transform him into Orlok, even the detail to have Thomas meet Orlok for the first time at a crossroads – a location symbolized with the devil and demons – really show his knack for horror, making him, in my opinion, the director in the genre today.
Nosferatu also uses but does not rely on, jumpscares to make the audience scared. Instead, it masterfully creates tension and fear through lighting, music, audio mixing, sound effects, camera angles, and creating an aura of terror around the titular Count.
I really commend Bill Skarsgaard for his performance. His Eastern European accent and heavy breathing, along with the mixing of his voice to make it dominate every scene Orlok is in, makes the audience fear Orlok and his overreaching shadow without seeing more than his silhouette, differing from the 1922 film where Count Orlok is nearly always in light on screen. This shows the tremendous job done by Eggers to make the audience not only scared of the vampire but also the idea that Orlok could be anywhere at any time to make sure the viewers aren’t at ease until sunrise. Whenever the audience does see Orlok, he is cloaked by shadow, the night, or a heavy overcoat, only shown in full lighting when he realizes his fate while naked and draining the blood from the heart of Ellen. Orlok is rotting, covered in maggots, and boasting a bushy mustache, and without knowing that Skarsgaard is Orlok, I wouldn’t be able to tell it was him, so I give kudos to the makeup department, they did amazing making the monster.
Overall, Nosferatu gave more quality scares in its 2-hour 16-minute runtime than nearly any other movie I’ve seen over the past few years. There are only a few other horror films that I can think of that are in the same ballpark as Nosferatu in the quality, art design, cinematography, acting, and sound design individually, let alone adding them all together to create what is sure to be a commercial and critical success. It doesn’t have the extreme gore of slashers nor the cheesy aspects of monster flicks. Nosferatu combines them all to create a masterpiece. Everything Robert Eggers touches turns to gold, and I’m glad his lifelong passion project was such a revelation.
I can’t wait to see what he does in the future.
I give Nosferatu (2024) a 9.5/10
