VERDICT: Exquisite film craft and committed performances, yet Robert Eggers’ take on the silent-horror classic feels more like an adoring tribute than a rethinking or reimagining.
Alonso Duralde
December 5th, 2024
F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu may be one of modern culture’s greatest acts of plagiarism; the film hewed so close to Dracula that the Bram Stoker estate sued and won, but Murnau’s film survived its court-ordered obliteration and went on to become a cornerstone of cinema.
Nosferatu’s influence on subsequent generations of directors has been incalculable, and the idea that Robert Eggers — the man behind The Witch and The Lighthouse, among others — would tackle a remake seems like a great idea on paper, with the contemporary filmmaker’s love of the morbid, the bleak, and the windswept matching perfectly with Murnau’s stark vision. And while Eggers nails the visuals and the sound (as we imagine it, had Murnau been making a talkie) of this horror classic, the results are more distanced appreciation than provocative reworking.
Eggers’ three previous films (including the underappreciated Viking saga The Northmen) were all originals, and in his first adaptation, he’s nestled in the coffin-like confines of existing property. Unlike Werner Herzog, whose 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre took Murnau’s film as a jumping-off point to explore Herzog’s own aesthetic and narrative fascinations, Eggers is a curator, capturing the original’s majesty, then putting it under glass for morbid inspection.
The story is a familiar one at this point: young newlywed real-estate broker Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) is sent from Germany to Carpathia to arrange the sale of a crumbling castle to the wealthy Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), over the protests of Thomas’ fragile wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who foresees disaster.
Thomas is warned by the local populace to avoid Orlok’s castle, but he ventures forth all the same, only to wind up imprisoned and periodically drained of blood by the vampiric Orlok. Eventually, he escapes, and upon his return home, Thomas must foil Orlok’s plans to possess Ellen and set up a new base of operations.
Eggers’ screenplay reveals a bold streak by framing the story around Ellen; the nearness of Orlok sends her into fits, and so of course medical science of the 19th century responds with ether, blood-letting, and the suggestion that she sleep in a corset to improve her posture.
Depp offers a wonderfully unrestrained performance, spotlighting Ellen’s vulnerability, yes, but also her deep and abiding love of Thomas, which is essential to providing stakes for this tale. Hoult matches her intensity and serves his version of Victorian bedsick realness along the way.
The cast, particularly Willem Dafoe as a daffy vampire hunter and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as an arrogant aristocrat fulfill Eggers’ vision, although Skarsgård’s Orlok never quite pops in the same way as Max Schreck in 1922 or Klaus Kinski in 1979. Here, the character is more of an idea than a presence, more effective when heard than seen. He is a mbient, conceptual menace, but stops short of presenting compellingly as flesh and blood.
As a craft showcase, Nosferatu gives Eggers’ below-the-line crew ample opportunity to shine. Many of the department heads have worked with the director before, and they all clearly relished the opportunities provided by the material, from customer Kharmel Cochrane’s vast array of Victorian suits and nightgowns to Jarin Blaschke’s stark, stripped-down cinematography, presenting images that viewers see in color but will most likely remember as being soaked with black ink, appropriately enough.
Nosferatu offers all the atmospherics and the creeping dread that it should, but this version remains locked in and static when it might have dared to explore new ground. Like its antagonist, it’s simultaneously living and dead.
