Nosferatu
“Does evil come from within us, or from beyond?” asks Lily-Rose Depp in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. “Por qué no los dos?” replies the little girl from the Old El Paso ad who lives rent free in my mind. She’s right, you know. And it seems Eggers knows too, as the origin of evil is something he’s explored before.
His first film, The Witch, was a portrait of puritanical oppression vs satanic liberation while his second, The Lighthouse, explored the fragility of man’s psyche when beans, seabirds and seminal fluid are all that keep him company. And after taking a detour through 9th century Scandinavia so that Alexander Skarsgård could snarl animalistically for 136 minutes Eggers returns to his Gothic horror roots with his long-awaited remake of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 film Nosferatu, itself an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.
When Uber gets the pin wrong
The result is a film that’s as visually gorgeous as it is thematically rich. I write this review one month to the day that I saw it and some of its frames are still inked onto my retinas as vividly as they appeared on the big screen. For a tale that’s been told dozens of times before, it’s Nosferatu’s craft and aesthetic that set it apart. Like The Witch its horror doesn’t come from scares but from its intoxicating sense of scenery and the masterful hand that puppets its characters.
Characters like apparent ingénue Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) and her realtor husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), who is sent by his employer Herr Knock (a depraved Simon McBurney) to Transylvania to close a deal with the elusive Count Orlok on a manor opposite Hutter’s own house in the fictional German town of Wisborg.
Since the year is 1838 and this meeting unfortunately couldn’t have been an email, Hutter hails a coach at a snow dusted crossroads and is guided through the Carpathian Mountains to Orlok’s precariously located castle.
Nicholas Hoult in the Uber to his client’s house
Like his ASMR predecessor Black Phillip, Count Orlok is introduced first by voice, then by his beastly form under the moonlight and his gnarled fingers in the candlelight as they offer a chalice of wine to his weary visitor. The pair get down to the business of real estate, but Thomas can’t shake a feeling of unease and desire to return to his wife as soon as possible.
Ellen yearns for his return, too. She is desperately lonely despite staying with her friends Anna (Emma Corrin) and Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and her mental state is waning as it did during childhood, tales of which she recounts to Anna during a coastal graveyard stroll. When Thomas eventually returns to Ellen much later and worse for wear, something else follows in his wake.
Lily-Rose Depp and Emma Corrin on a casual stroll by a coastal graveyard
Nosferatu had been in the works for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I’d completely forgotten the casting announcement and spent the entire film oblivious as to who lay behind the unrecognisable facade and moustache (yes, there’s a moustache). The “of course” came as the credits rolled and my reverence for Bill Skarsgård’s craft crept higher still. He’s every bit as otherworldly and menacing as the character should be; more entity than man, except for when it comes to his obsession with Ellen.
Eggers muse Anya Taylor-Joy was originally cast back in 2017 (as was Harry Styles – thank the gods that didn’t pan out) but was replaced by Lily-Rose Depp due to a scheduling conflict. While I enjoy Taylor-Joy, I don’t think she’d have been right here. Nepo baby or not, Lily-Rose Depp is a revelation as a young woman haunted by what Dexter Morgan would call a ‘dark passenger’. She is as adept at playing pure as she is at writhing around in a state of possession, eyes rolled back and frothing at the mouth. Acting alongside the likes of Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson would’ve surely been intimidating but she proves she has cause to be there, stealing scenes right out from under them.
More wine, Sir?
But it’s not just the performances that strengthen the fabric of Murnau’s original (and indeed every Dracula adaptation that’s come after it, namely Francis Ford Coppola’s camp 1992 outing); it’s the extra lore that seeps into Eggers’ version.
One relic of Murnau’s film is the swarm of rats and the resulting plague that Nosferatu brings with him as he enters Wisborg. Where once it was considered a sign of the times surrounding fear of The Other in 1920s Germany, here it more likely represents the immense melancholy that plagues Ellen, a woman so lonely and so left to her own mental anguish that the fractures of her psyche call an unfortunate suitor.
Just Willem Dafoe being Willem Dafoe
This reciprocity between the pursuer and the pursued - present also in the wonderful but short lived John Logan series Penny Dreadful - adds a context that strengthens the narrative and gives Ellen more agency. In Murnau’s original, Orlok simply sees a portrait of Ellen and thinks she has a fine neck. In Stoker’s novel, Mina has only a faint psychic connection with Dracula. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mina is instead a reincarnation of Dracula’s wife, so the connection is justifiably stronger. But in Eggers Nosferatu, Ellen has (whether knowingly or inadvertently) summoned Nosferatu, and therefore has a responsibility to unsummon him.
While not as overtly erotic as some of the scenes in Bram Stoker’s Dracula - a film I love for its sexual awakening powers and forgive for its silliness - Nosferatu does display that same teratophilia (‘sexual attraction to monsters’, thanks Ancient Greeks) that features anywhere from The Shape of Water to Beauty and the Beast.
Master has given Dobby a delicious pigeon
The film also shares aesthetic similarities with the stunningly beautiful Estonian film November - particularly the snowy crossroads in the heart of the woods - while Thomas’ stopover in a Romani town triggered flashbacks to Resident Evil: Village. Eggers’ attention to detail in building a visual world is a thing to behold and it’s certainly in full force here.
While I don’t rate Nosferatu quite as highly as The Witch or The Lighthouse, being the third best film in one of the strongest filmographies of modern day directors is still worth bragging about.
Verdict:
☆☆☆☆½
Nosferatu is in cinemas January 1st.
