Writer/director Robert Eggers’ rendition of Nosferatu makes the best of the classic vampire story’s pedigree — relying a familiar formula while crafting something all his own. The resulting film is a major artistic statement from one of this generation’s few truly stylized filmmakers.
1922’s original Nosferatu existed only as an unauthorized retelling of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. The retelling has grown into one of Western culture’s greatest hits, its variations including Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and Francis Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).
With this latest Nosferatu, Eggers synthesizes and highlights the aesthetic through-line common among all his films: part Gothic, part period, all atmosphere.
After cutting his teeth on 2015’s horror breakout The Witch, Eggers defied trends and expectations with his ponderous follow-up, 2019’s The Lighthouse. And in keeping with that tradition, in 2022 Eggers bucked assumptions again with The Northman, a bombastic high-drama Viking-epic-cum-Hamlet-retelling, and proof that the director can not only marshal a larger budget, but work wonders with a larger cast.
For Nosferatu, Eggers focuses his rendition on the female lead, Ellen Hutter, here played by Lily-Rose Depp. Ellen is haunted by her astral-projecting childhood promise of eternal betrothal to the sinister, dream-haunting Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). When her more earthly husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) journeys to Orlok’s castle in the east to broker the sale of the Count’s new German home, Ellen fears that the time to fulfill her pledge has come at last.
Though Ellen’s turmoil serves as a launch pad and focal point, as with all other renditions, the story remains rather diffuse. We move from Thomas’s journey and meeting with Orlok; to Ellen’s troubles at home; the spread of those troubles to her caretakers, Friedrich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin); to the errands of Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson) and Prof. von Franz (Willem Dafoe); and so on. This movement across characters, and the movement of the scenes themselves, feels almost dreamlike, as the entire structure of the film drifts like curtains in a night wind.
While the tension can at times lose its sense of direction as a result, the film is never dull; rather the opposite. Though punctuated by all the creeping jump scares you might expect, the sheer shrieking, clacking, grinding volume of the thing feels cranked to 10 from start to finish. Screaming strings are a constant, and Orlok’s voice alone is a blaring shroud of death, closer to throat singing than speech. If anything, one cannot help but wonder if the film may have benefited from more profound periods of inactivity. In some ways, Nosferatu feels like a fusion of later attempts – the atmosphere of Herzog, the explosiveness of Coppola – more than it does an homage to F.W. Murnau’s silent original.
Eggers’ vision of Orlok, smartly excluded from advertising, is also unique – and Skarsgård is all but completely transformed. The clawed hands and hooked nose may read as classic, but the storybook Slavic mustache and comb-over, while period correct, are all new. Eggers’ Orlok is also, in many ways, the most sinister of the bunch. And while Eggers’ interpretation is coherent, and immaculately executed, it’s in this one way that his Nosferatu falls short on an emotional level.
Though the melancholy of the character is perhaps most perfectly articulated in Herzog’s rendition, Max Schreck, Klaus Kinski and Gary Oldman all played a character who was profoundly sad, utterly alone, staring down the barrel of an eternity of solitude. Skarsgård’s vampire has more in common with evil spirits of eastern folklore; an implacable presence hungry for innocence and vitality. Again, this is no less valid an interpretation – but without that emotional core, we are left with, well, humans. Ellen’s vulnerability, Thomas’s humility. And while still compelling, they are less total.
Depp is adequately disturbed, and particularly convincing in some of her more extreme moments of hysteria. Like the film as a whole, though, her character may have benefited from more dynamism on the page; she’s mostly in freak-out mode for the duration.
Hoult, hitting all his Dracula bases after a turn as Renfield late last year, is believable as the sensitive husband. But with the increased focus on Ellen, the role of Thomas fades to the background as the film progresses. Oddly enough, this screen time is picked up by Taylor-Johnson’s Harding. A well-meaning dandy broken on the wheel of misfortune, he ably plays both comic and tragic, and arguably becomes the standout among his peers.
The highlight, however, is Nosferatu’s robust supporting cast. Defoe’s von Franz (Nosferatu’s van Helsing) takes some notes from Anthony Hopkins’ warm and humorous ‘92 turn. This occult-leaning vision of the character is perhaps the most compelling it’s ever been. Frequent Eggers collaborator Ineson is another jewel, as the gravelly-voiced Dr. Sievers, with equal parts gravitas and incredulity. But Simon McBurney as Herr Knock (Nosferatu’s Renfield), more than any other, absolutely brings the house down. Terrifying, grotesque, absurd – with all of the three or four scenes, he practically owns the film.
Nosferatu is, like all Eggers’ work, a technical masterpiece. Jarin Blaschke, his constant cinematographer, makes another consummate effort. Production and sound design are as fastidious and grand as anything you’ll find in theaters today. Eggers’ period dialogue and eye for detail are second to none.
Beneath the spectacle the beating heart is there, but it’s not as pronounced as in Eggers’ early work. Still, in its final moments Nosferatu delivers. In a climax to rival any of its forebears, the film lays bare what it is and always will be: the Western world’s great Gothic romance.
