It’sssssssss temptinggggggggg to wrrrrrite an entirrrrrrrrre rrrrrrreviewww of Nosferatu (now strrrrrrrrreaming on VOD platforrrmsssssssss like Amazon Prime Video) like thisssssssss, but to do ssso would be (takes a long wheezy inhale that sounds like a wildebeest sucking its final breath through a crushed windpipe) (pause) (pause) (pause) annoying. So I won’t. Bill Skarsgard’s vocal (and physical, and psychological) performance as the title “vampyr” is just one of the highly memorable, scary, funny, scary-funny elements of Robert Eggers’ remake of the F. W. Murnau horror classic, itself a copyright-dodging unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. The OG-goth source material is a ripe beneficiary of Eggers’ brand of exacting authenticity and detail – which we saw in his previous works, The Northman, The Lighthouse and new horror classic The Witch – and the only thing that eclipses Skarsgard and Lily-Rose Depp’s highly committed performances is the gorgeously necrotic atmosphere he summons. Ironically, the film was a pretty big Christmastime hit, grossing $156 million at the worldwide box office, proving Eggers to be the rare auteur who can cross over to mainstream audiences, who GULP… GULP… GULPED it down like a very thirsty ancient corpse-man feasting on the good ol’ red stuff.
NOSFERATU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Don’t blame Ellen (Depp) for f—ing up real hard – she was young and dumb and desperate when she wept and prayed to the darkness for something, anything to assuage her deep deep loneliness, and ended up pledging her heart and her soul and her everything to “the Nosferatu,” an otherworldly vampire who turns up to take advantage of the sitch. It could happen to anyone, really, especially during the dark age before My Chemical Romance existed. Some years go by, and now it’s 1838. Ellen and her new husband Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) live in a small apartment in Wisburg, Germany, where he works as a real estate agent. He’s got a plum gig on the docket, and it requires him to travel through the gloomy Carpathian forest in Transylvania to sell an old Wisburg manor to a decrepit nobleman looking to relocate. Per Thomas’ boss Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), the buyer “has one foot in the grave, so to speak, HAHAHAHAHAHA.”
Between that laugh and Thomas’ lovely new wife pleading him to not go because she’s been having terrible dreams of death – and, it’s more than implied, so they can continue their honeymoon phase, hubba hubba – you’d think he’d stay home, but no, he has a living to make. “It portends something awful for us!” Ellen cries, but he pish-poshes her concerns away, completely ignoring the fact that she used the word “portend,” which is not a word one ever uses lightly. Besides, he has the Joneses to keep up with, as their best friends Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) are flush from his shipbuilding business, with two sweet young daughters. This One Big Score for Thomas will set him and Ellen up nicely. And just to be safe, while he’s gone, she’ll stay with the Hardings, since in this era, no woman could ever take care of herself for a few weeks.
And so Thomas goes over the river and through the woods and past the hostile locals with the strange customs (a little light exhumation, some possible virgin sacrifice), to drop by sweet old Count Orlok’s (Sarsgard) cottage so he can sign some paperwork. At first, we never get a good look at Orlok, since he wraiths around his dim, dingy Castle of Disorientation, casting shadows hither and yon, and he doesn’t seem particularly fond of doing business in the daylight. In this place, night and day seem upside-down to poor Thomas, who seems to be falling ill, an affliction that might have to do with him waking up in Orlok’s castle with bite marks near his heart. Hmm.
Back in Germany, Ellen, too, falls ill, prompting the Hardings to contact Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson), who bleeds her, then suggests tightening her corset, tying her to the bed and giving her more ether, which is as sound a medical treatment as any. When it doesn’t work, he suggests contacting Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (WILLEM DAFOE, all caps necessary), a man of science who was blackballed by his community of reasonable men for believing in the occult and things of that nature. Meanwhile, as Ellen dreams of Orlok in a manner one might find disturbing, the ol’ coot pushes a contract in front of Thomas, and intimidates him to sign it. It’s in a strange language and I think it says Thomas is essentially handing Ellen over to Orlok on a silver platter with flowers and rainbows, but hey, who wouldn’t rather deal with a zillion-year-old bloodsucking freak capable of psychic possession instead of a smiley gladhand red-blazer Realtor making you sign your name dozens and dozens of times so you can go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt? CHAOS REIGNS!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Surprised I went this long without mentioning Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu, starring Klaus Kinski? Me too. Dafoe also played the guy who played the OG Nosferatu, Max Schreck, in Shadow of the Vampire, which dramatized the making of the 1922 silent classic. We can’t go without mentioning Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, either, which was similarly out-there stylistically. And while we’re here, shall we rank the Eggers films? Yes:
4. Nosferatu – Funny how the least of Eggers’ filmography is still one of the best of 2024.
3. The Lighthouse – Grippingly weird two-hander with Robert Pattinson across from a top-five Dafoe performance, both playing lighthouse keepers who lose their marbles. Does not smell like fahhts.
2. The Northman – The story of a Viking on an all-timer of a revenge crusade opens with a pagan prayer to a volcano and only gets stranger and violent-er from there.
1. The Witch – One of three or four standard-bearers for the new era of horror. If thou dons’t likest to live deliciously, thou dons’t likest this movie.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s hard not to admire Depp’s bold and courageous OTT swooning in the face of an inexplicable psychic and physical power, or Skarsgard’s bonkers vocalization of Orlok, or Dafoe’s outright scene theft after he appears at the halfway mark to goose a film that was just starting to list in the waters a little bit.
Memorable Dialogue: Eggers and co-scripter Henrik Galeen spoon-feed some sumptuous dialogue morsels to Dafoe, the best of which is clearly this one: “I have seen things in this world that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!”
Sex and Skin: Is it possible for a movie to be erotic, but also not even remotely sexy? Congrats to Eggers for that achievement. Anyway, there’s some full-frontal male and female here, and an implication of necrophilia.
Our Take: I was slightly disappointed by Nosferatu’s muted emotions, in spite of Depp’s admirably passionate readings of old-timey, almost Shakesperean-English dialogue. Any attempt to engage our hearts is trumped by Eggers’ heavy-duty emphasis on atmospherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre, and make sure you’re rolling the living shit out of those r’s. This isn’t a net negative, though – far from it. Would you rather watch a film laden with romanto-gothic overtures about the sacrifices we make for love, or be so immersed in haunted, crypt-like, oozing-pestilence vibes, you can all but smell the reeking rot emanating from Orlok’s open sores? Don’t answer that.
Nosferatu is an exercise of style-as-substance, Eggers using his razor-sharp vision – he’s very much in control here, boasting more in common with Wes Anderson than, say, John Carpenter or Dario Argento – to put us right in the room with a vile monster and his victims. The director envelops us in shadows and exquisite sound design (the gulping Jerry, the gulping!), employing a color palette that’s so desaturated it’s almost black and white. Some might be left cold by the rigorously rendered set design and every-button-in-place costumes, but that seems to be intentional, using that point as the fulcrum to balance chills with white-hot terror – evident in several iconic shots, none more so than at the searing climax – and a potent sense of humor via Dafoe, who draws out a vein of welcome campiness among the overheated, period-authentic melodrama.
And so this story of a real estate deal gone horribly awry – plagues, demons and other forms of existential terror don’t seem too far removed from such things, in my experience – is therefore about nothing more than the reiteration of old, familiar stories in new, refreshing ways. Eggers’ tone is refreshingly apolitical, as there’s no attempt to shoehorn contemporary ideals into Nosferatu; it’s about how bad men feast on noble hearts simply because that’s the nature of evil. “I am an appetite,” Orlok declares, “nothing more.” We get it, Count. Our appetite for Eggers’ style of storytelling knows no bounds.
Our Call: Nosferatu: STRRRRRRRRRRRREAM ITTTTTTTTTTTTTT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
