NOSFERATU (2024)
“Does Evil Come from Within Us or From Without?”
Grade: A+
By this point, Robert Eggers has made a name for himself as the historically minded director who strives for authenticity in his projects, whether it be for Puritan America in The Witch (2015), an old, rocky island in The Lighthouse (2019), or the Viking-ruled seas in The Northman (2022). With his latest feature he, in a sense, takes us back to two separate years in the past. The first is to the year 1838 in the fictitious town of Wisborg, Germany. The second is 1922, the year of the masterpiece Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, of which this film is a remake. While it doesn’t match the original, Nosferatu is an excellent and terrifying film in its own right, even as it pays homage to both the 1922 film and the original novel Dracula.
The tone is set in the chilling opening as young Ellen’s (Lilly Rose-Depp) wish for companionship inadvertently summons the ancient sorcerer Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) from his grave as the vampire Nosferatu. Years later, Orlok sets his sights on Ellen’s town Wisborg, using her husband, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), to arrange for his travels from Transylvania. Each night, Orlok’s grip on Ellen grows stronger, eventually drawing the attention of Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe). When Orlok arrives and spreads the Black Death through Wisborg via a legion of rats, Von Franz and Ellen are the only ones who know the sacrifice which must be made to destroy Nosferatu and end his curse.
Although different in its approach, Eggers’s Nosferatu retains A Symphony of Horror’s themes of death and the occult while upgrading them for modern audiences, using Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) and Van Helsing stand-in Von Franz as guides to this evil world, which he saturates in a truly unsettling atmosphere. Indoor scenes are illuminated with natural light by candles, and day and night are both suffused with a pale, bluish-white filter by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. This reflects the film’s winter setting, further enhancing the presence of death. In both Wisborg and Transylvania, the sky is almost always overcast, and it is often snowing or raining. It’s not until the very end that the sun shines in all its brilliance, offering relief and comfort from the preceding terror.
Many viewers are likely to cry fowl at Count Orlok’s new appearance. Rather than the pale, spindly thing made famous by Max Schreck in the original film (and later Klaus Kinski in the 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampyre), Bill Skarsgard’s version of the character sports a thick overcoat and a black, bushy mustache. His most distracting trait is his deep voice, which is creepy when he speaks his native tongue, but sounds a little too over-the-top when he speaks English, and risks recalling Gary Oldman’s similar eccentric vocalization in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). The differences are probably Eggers’s way of distancing himself from Schreck’s Orlok; he knows nothing can possibly top it, so rather than try, he makes his own unique version. But Skarsgard’s Orlok is still a hideous and inhumanly evil presence both on-screen and off.
When we see him, he is stalking Ellen or feeding on his victims. When we don’t see him, his shadowy hand passes over town, his rodents spread the plague and Knock screams of his coming. By giving Orlok a direct connection to Ellen, Eggers magnifies the horror by making Ellen the heart of the movie. Just as she brought forth the evil, she must be the one to destroy it, which she does in a visceral and devastating yet emotionally satisfying finale.
There have been differing opinions online at this point as to the quality of Rose-Depp’s performance, which is her breakthrough role. As such, she is nothing short of impressive, effectively rising to the emotional and sometimes physical challenges. The moments where she is possessed by Orlok are truly horrific, occasionally contorting her body into grotesque shapes while reluctantly channeling his evil against her loved ones. It is she who provides the film’s most terrifying scene as Ellen passionately declares her love for her husband just before accusing him of not loving her and going into convulsions. Nosferatu is an excellent springboard for her film career, and it will hopefully lead to bigger projects in the future. The rest of the cast puts on solid performances as well, particularly Hoult as the devoted husband Thomas and Dafoe as Von Franz.
The thing about Nosferatu most likely to irk filmgoers and horror fans is its length and pacing. Unlike A Symphony of Horror, which clocks in at just over an hour and a half, the new film is two hours and twelve minutes and is quite heavy in terms of story and details as it moves toward its climax. But the atmosphere, performances, and overwhelming sense of dread more than make up for the (very) occasional lulls. Despite its shortcomings, Nosferatu is still a masterpiece in gothic horror, and its box-office success shows that there is still an audience for such a film.
Director: Robert Eggers
Screenplay: Robert Eggers (Based on the screenplay by Henrick Galeen, from the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker)
Producers: Jeff Robinov, John Graham, Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus, Robert Eggers
Cast: Bill Skarsgard (Count Orlok), Nicholas Hoult (Thomas Hutter), Lily-Rose Depp (Ellen Hutter), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Friedrich Harding), Emma Corrin (Anna Harding), Willem Dafoe (Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz), Ralph Ineson (Dr. Wilhelm Sievers), Simon McBurney (Herr Knock)
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