by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney
Intro:
… straightforward but skilfully executed rendition of a timeless tale.
The story of Nosferatu is a fascinating one as it pertains to the history of cinema. First blood took place way back in 1922 with F. W. Murnau’s silent German Expressionist Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. The film, which cheerfully flogged the entire story of Bram Stoker’s 1897 book Dracula and just changed some of the names and events, had a massive, indelible impact on cinema, the reverberations of which can be felt to this day. Lucky too, because Stoker’s heirs tried to sue the bloody thing out of existence (on account of the egregious copycatting) and had many of the prints destroyed. Cut to 1979, and ol’ mate Werner Herzog had a shot at the title with Nosferatu the Vampyre, a film that was more overtly an adaptation of Stoker’s work – Klaus Kinski plays Count Dracula, and the rest of the cast also have the names of characters from the novel – but still paid homage to Murnau’s visual style and aesthetic.
In the year 2000, director E. Elias Merhige released the wildly entertaining Shadow of the Vampire, which was a partially fictionalised account of the making of the original 1922 Nosferatu and starred Willem Dafoe as Max Shreck. In 2023, director David Lee Fisher knocked out a very low budget Nosferatu, which appears to have benefited from starring the resplendent Doug Jones (The Shape of Water, Hellboy) but otherwise has not made much of an impact.
Which brings us to the latest iteration, Nosferatu, by none other than the great Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman) and the result is as visually spectacular as expected but perhaps a wee bit too reverent at times.
Nosferatu is the story of Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), a young woman who was once beset by vivid nightmares about a creature who lusted for her, but since marrying handsome lad Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), her life has been on the up and up. Sadly, these newlyweds are forced to separate, at least temporarily, as Tommo has scored a sweet new gig through his real estate firm. Unfortunately, due to the eccentricities of the client in question, this will require the fresh-faced young man to bugger off to a gothic castle in Transylvania where he finally meets the extremely creepy Count Orlok (an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård) and things soon proceed in a familiar and fangy fashion.
First things first, Nosferatu is a beautiful looking film. Stunning, actually. The recreation of 19th century Germany is meticulous and textured, every shot dripping with atmosphere and a grimy aesthetic. The performances are, also, uniformly excellent, with Nicholas Hoult in particular doing some of his finest work to date, Bill Skarsgård delivering his creepiest villain turn yet and Lily-Rose Depp making an emphatic case that she’s not just a good looking nepo baby. There are also genuinely creepy and disturbing sequences in this film that are likely to get under even the hardiest genre fan’s skin, showcasing a vision of the fanged one that is so disgusting, so pungent, that it burns away even the slightest notion of the vampire as a romantic figure.
The problem with Nosferatu, however, is one of familiarity. Or rather overfamiliarity. Despite being gorgeously made across the board, this is a film you have seen before. Even if you haven’t watched any of the versions of Nosferatu listed earlier, you’ve almost certainly seen one of the oodles of Dracula movies. Maybe you saw Francis Ford Coppola’s excellent 1992 chiller, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Perhaps you accidentally came across Dario Argento’s godawful 2012 version. Hell, it could be that you stumbled onto a Hammer horror iteration or a Universal Pictures version. But the point is, unless you’re a tween or a recently lapsed member of the Amish faith, you’ve probably seen a Dracula flick and consequently what happens in Nosferatu will be extremely predictable.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, after all, there are many worthy remakes in this world (John Carpenter’s The Thing and David Cronenberg’s The Fly, to name just two) but Nosferatu plays it so straight compared to Eggers’ other work, with such deference to the source material, that it rarely surprises. This is a very traditional film from an ordinarily non-traditional director, and those expecting a wild third act subversion of form like The Witch or the hallucinatory delirium of The Lighthouse may be a tad disappointed.
That caveat aside, Nosferatu is an extraordinarily accomplished film. A grimy, bleak, visceral descent into madness and desperation, a grotesquely gothic exploration of a true, ancient evil and a tragic tale to boot. Those expecting Eggers to subvert the now over a century-old original may feel a little let down by this production’s uncharacteristic reverence, but everyone else will appreciate this straightforward but skilfully executed rendition of a timeless tale.
