Nosferatu

Directed by Robert Eggers (2024) ***1/2

When German director F. W. Murnau made Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror in 1922, the screenplay based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel had just enough names and details altered that the film’s makers considered there would be no copyright issues with Stoker’s estate. (They were wrong; the filmmakers were sued anyway, with all copies of the film to be destroyed. A few prints survived.) In Murnau’s film, Count Dracula became Count Orlok. Although later interpretations of Orlok/Dracula often emphasized a debonair side (Bela Lugosi, for example), Max Schreck’s creepy interpretation of the evil Count, physically deformed and calculated to induce nightmares, set the template for the entire horror film genre (Nicolas Cage, in his recent Longlegs, counted Schreck as a big influence on the twisted menace in that film).

Robert Eggers, one of the greatest living film directing stylists, was so taken at a young age with both the1922 Nosferatu and Stoker’s novel that he adopted the story, using Henrik Galeen’s 1922 screenplay and the Stoker novel, as a stage play in high school. The production was later transferred to the Edwin Booth Theatre in New York.

Over twenty years later, Nosferatu is now Egger’s fourth film and it’s a killer of a presentation. Merging aspects of both Murnau and Stoker, Nosferatu is a narrative of almost unrelenting dread. Taking place in Germany in 1838 and using the visual language and tinted colors of silent horror films (Murnau, Andrzej Żuławski, Fritz Lang and Victor Sjöström come to mind), Nosferatu doesn’t shy away from the story’s inherent erotic and violent content. As visually accomplished as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula was thirty years ago, Egger’s film makes Coppola’s look like Hollywood product.

Most filmgoers (and readers) will be familiar with the basic story, one of a husband and estate agent (Thomas Hutter, played by Nicholas Hoult, Collide) called by Orlok to journey to the Count’s castle in Transylvania; the agent’s increasingly arduous and trepidatious journey to Orlok’s castle, where he is eventually trapped by the Count and barely escapes alive; Orlok’s coffined voyage across the ocean to his newly purchased home (bringing pestilence with him), and his arrival in civilization, ready to spread ancient evil to an unsuspecting populace. There are a few, though, who do suspect Orlok’s arrival. One is Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), Thomas’ new bride, who received a visit from Orlok in her youth, claiming her body and soul for some future time. That prologue visit, alarmingly horrific and inventively choreographed, sets the stage for the tone of the film. I was reminded, when watching it, of the late 18th century gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown, in which the world of polite, civilized society is interrupted by horrible supernatural events. Another who’s aware of Orlok’s coming is Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), Orlok’s deranged, bird-eating lackey, the same disciple who set up the real estate transaction.

The story is familiar, but the ways Eggers brings it to life are extraordinary. This isn’t a Dracula you’ve seen before. Played by Bill Skarsgård (Naked Singularity) in a thick, guttural accent that seems steeped in antiquity, this is a diseased, profane, pustulant, but still powerful remnant of a man; you can practically smell his rotting flesh, though he covers himself with thick cloaks (and, in his first scene, is barely seen at all, his face obscured in shadows). He sleeps in his coffin with rats and travels across the sea with them (indeed, Eggers used 5,000 rats in the course of the film). Ellen, staying at the elegant estate of Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kraven the Hunter) and his wife, Anna (Emma Corrin, Deadpool & Wolverine) while Thomas is on his journey, has increasingly fitful nightmares and trance-like spells the closer Orlok gets to the town. Friedrich is a devout skeptic of the possibility of the supernatural — until he no longer can afford to be. One of the film’s most startling sequences commences with the Count’s arrival: standing at his window at night and surveying the town, a shadow of his clawed hand travels across the city tops, with the sounds of moaning and anguish accompanying everything his shadow touches — the nightmares of the unsuspecting.

Fresh air is introduced in the character of occult philosopher Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe); it may be the first time anyone sounds genuinely happy in the film’s 132-minute length. This version’s Abraham Van Helsing has no previous knowledge of vampirism but realizes upon examining Anna that evil is afoot and goes about researching what needs to be done about it. Dafoe, as in Eggers’ last two films, The Lighthouse and The Northman, brings wild life to the proceedings, inhabiting a scholar who relishes learning about something new, even if that something is very, very old.

The costumes and set design reflect that antiquity with ornate, barely discerned, almost subliminal textures and designs, distressed and heavy clothing, glimpses of wealth, cavernous dining rooms, molding basements, decayed castle walls. Eggers, with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, creates his own painterly, dreamlike cinematic world. Linda Muir, who designed the heavily researched dresses, jewelry, hats and other garments, deserves an award for her work.

Two of Nosferatu’s actors have, ironically, already starred in interpretations of Dracula onscreen; Nicholas Hoult was Renfield in the Nicolas Cage comedy of the same name in 2023 and Willem Dafoe played Max Schreck in the 2000 Shadow of the Vampire (about the making of Murnau’s Nosferatu).

—Michael R. Neno, 2025 January 4