Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu is among the most impeccably mounted horror films ever made. It’s a new classic.
PLOT: A young woman is haunted by a terrifying vampire who’s become infatuated with her and will go to any lengths to be with her.
REVIEW: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Robert Eggers is one of the most exciting directors working nowadays. Having made a huge impression with The Witch and The Lighthouse, Eggers’s The Northman was his biggest, most ambitious movie to date. It perfectly married his aesthetic to a larger canvas that delivered for a broad audience but never felt compromised. The fact that The Northman wasn’t seen more widely on the big screen is a tragedy, but with Nosferatu, Eggers seems on the cusp of a major hit that should open him up to an even bigger audience.
One thing’s for sure – there’s not going to be anything else like it playing in theaters this holiday season. Sporting an hard-R rating, this is the scariest vampire movie in ages. So, what is the difference between Nosferatu and Dracula? For those who don’t know, Nosferatu was a silent, 1922 German expressionist horror film by F.W. Murnau which was an unofficial and unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Like Murnau’s film, Eggers (who also wrote the movie) follows the basic premise of Stoker’s Dracula, with Bill Skarsgard’s Count Orlok consumed with a blinding obsession for Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen Hutter (a stand-in for Mina Harker). All of the familiar story beats are followed, with the basic premise being the same. However, rather than coming across as a gothic romance, this feels more like a possession film, with Lily-Rose Depp giving the performance of a lifetime as the increasingly unhinged Ellen.
In the film, Orlok and Ellen are psychically bonded, with her, at first, his willing slave, only for her to be repelled in the movie’s prologue, when she gets a real sense of his undeniable evil and depravity. One thing worth noting is that Eggers has risen to the occasion of giving us a screen vampire who doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen before. Skarsgard’s look has been kept under wraps, and it’s a striking vision, with him genuinely giving us a new vision of what it might be like to be truly undead.
Skarsgard, with his deep, dark Transylvanian accent and imposing build, makes for a terrifying Orlok. However, it can’t be denied that Depp is almost as scary, especially in sequences where she goes into a trance, with her worthy of serious awards consideration. She’s well-supported by Nicholas Hoult, who plays her husband, Thomas, who’s this story’s version of Jonathan Harker. Much has been made about how Thomas played a less active role in Nosferatu as opposed to Dracula. Still, here Thomas is more full-blooded, with his devotion to Ellen and pursuit of Orlok owing more to Stoker than Murnau.
Willem Dafoe, who’s become an Eggers regular, is superb as the Van Helsing analogue, Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, who dominates the movie’s second half, playing him more unhinged than the heroic vampire hunter of old. Ralph Ineson (of The Witch) is a good foil for him, as his more science-based pupil, while Simon McBurney gives a ferocious performance as this story’s version of Renfield, Herr Knock.
One thing worth noting about Eggers’s film is how hard it hits, not only in terms of horror but also emotionally. Emma Corin is especially heartbreaking as Anna, one of Orlok’s ill-fated victims. Even Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who initially comes off as a bit of a send-up of moneyed aristocracy, shows real pathos as the movie goes on, with Eggers really giving the entire cast of characters their due.
Aesthetically, this is the most impeccable mounting of a vampire film since Coppola did Bram Stoker’s Dracula thirty years ago. Using a 1:66:1 aspect ratio, Nosferatu will likely be a visual feast for those lucky enough to see it on an IMAX screen, while the sound mix and score (by Robin Carolan) are superb. Indeed, this is one of the most lovingly made horror films in some time, with Eggers likely having set out to create a definitive version of the tale. It’s long been his passion project, and you can tell. For me, this is up there with the best films of the year, and probably the only horror film I’ve seen recently that sent a true chill up my spine. Of all the films I’ve seen this year – and there have been a lot – this one seems to have the best chance of becoming a classic.
