"Nosferatu" review — Folk-horror vampire remake is evil incarnate
“Pray, pray, pray.”
This film was featured on my Best Films of 2024 list.
In 1922, a German production studio released a low-budget silent horror film called Nosferatu, a film about a real estate broker named Thomas Hutter who travels to Transylvania to sell a large manor to the enigmatic Count Orlok. Much to the surprise of Thomas, Orlok is in fact a vicious vampire with a penchant for blood. While it is now seen as a seminal work of German expressionist cinema, the film was, at the time, at the centre of a massive legal spat between the production studio and the estate of Bram Stoker. The estate noticed some not-so-subtle similarities to Stoker’s novel Dracula, which the original German cut of Nosferatu names as the film’s basis, and sued the production studio for the infringement of copyright. The German court ordered all prints of the film be destroyed. However, as the film was being destroyed in Europe, one managed to escape to the U.S., where Dracula was already in the public domain, ensuring its publicity. Nowadays, one-hundred-two years later, the pale visage of Max Shreck’s Orlok is one of the horror genre’s most enduring symbols, with the monster even making his way into a guest spot on SpongeBob SquarePants. But when a horror image is so ubiquitous, and the whole category of vampires so overdone, is it possible to bring any fear back to the vampire?
In 2024, after nearly a decade in production, Robert Eggers’ thrilling remake of the “symphony of horror” has finally arrived in theatres. It’s the latest in a long, long line of high-profile adaptations of Stoker’s monster. Not only has the novel been directly adapted dozens of times for the screen, but Dracula as a character has appeared in hundreds of films, from schlocky mid-century Hammer horror movies to children’s animated movies, and even appeared in a few pornographic films. Last year alone saw two big-budget Hollywood Dracula stories released to theatres. Dripping with a frightening atmosphere from its very first frames, Eggers makes it evident that this is no ordinary retelling of Dracula. Here, darkness and evil lurk around the edges of the frame, bringing the demonic inclinations of the monster to an extreme perhaps never seen before. In an age where the sex appeal of the vampiric form has never been higher (largely thanks to Twilight and TV’s The Vampire Diaries), this imagining of the classic monster takes us back to a time when these bloodsucker monstrosities were something to fear and revile. Lit with the colouration of a ghost, Eggers’ Nosferatu is ready to pull you into a place of pure evil. Just let yourself succumb to the darkness.
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| Photo via Focus Features. |
It’s 1838, and Thomas and Ellen Hutter (played by Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp respectively) have just returned home to the coastal German city of Wisborg. Thomas is a young real estate solicitor whose next big sale might just land him a permanent position at his firm. He just needs to complete the sale of a dilapidated urban manor to an “eccentric” Transylvanian count. Meanwhile, Ellen begins having frightful dreams of terror and darkness — the same dreams that she once suffered from as a young girl — and urges Thomas not to leave. He, instead, leaves Ellen with his dear friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin respectively). As Thomas ventures further East, Ellen’s dreams turn from mere nightmares into fits of convulsions and out-of-body experiences that quickly worsen. It brings her into the care of renowned physician Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (played by Ralph Ineson) and the distracted professor-turned-mystic Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (played by Willem Dafoe), who begins to suspect that Ellen’s fits are no bout of melancholy, but the result of demonic possession. Out east, Thomas has finally come face to face with the bizarre Count Orlok (played by Bill Skarsgård) and discovers a horrifying secret: the Count is a vampire and his fangs are primed for Ellen’s blood.
With its rich cinematography, off-putting performances, and distinct sense of history and folklore, the atmosphere of terror created by Nosferatu is second to none. Jarring musical choices undercut the vengeful throws of Ellen’s possession, cut with nightmares of a creature cloaked in darkness, with a hand of anger turned fiercely towards her. Like the rest of his filmography, Eggers’ command of giving new life to history is second to none. If historicity is what makes movies like The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019) and The Northman (2022) so effective, then that impulse is even stronger here. The key to the film is how it soaks itself in the historical conceptions of monsters and medicine, using the idiosyncrasies of the past as a launching place for its tale of terror. Blood flows freely here: from chests, from necks, from eyes, from mouths. It’s pulled out not just by the blood-sucking monster that serves as the film’s main antagonist, but by the medicine men trying to make sense of Ellen’s episodes and the plague epidemic that soon breaks out in Wisborg. Eggers further leans heavily into folklore and superstition, embracing all of the religiosity and customs. Early in the film, Thomas encounters a Romani ritual to dispel the presence of the devil and, later, Professor Von Franz engages in all manner of occult activities to identify the encroaching darkness on the city.
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| Photo via Focus Features. |
The performances here are incredible without exception. Nicholas Hoult, who played Dracula’s assistant Renfield in last year’s film of the same name, is excellent as Thomas Hutter, a man who slowly falls victim to a world of spiritual danger he never thought possible. Willem Dafoe’s turn as Professor Von Franz, this film’s answer to Abraham van Helsing, is dynamic and exciting, bringing some much-needed energy to the cold world of 1838 Germany. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin fall perfectly into their roles as the doomed Harding couple. Lily-Rose Depp excels as Ellen, a role as electric as it is physically demanding. Depp finds herself exploring a vibrant arrange of dynamic vocal and physical choices in a role full of shock and awe. But the best performance here comes from the vampire himself. Bill Skarsgård’s vampire is one of the most horrifying interpretations of the creature to date. Channel a truly demonic presence, the decaying Count Orlok is a nightmare made flesh. The Orlok-Ellen dynamic is central to the film, with this tale of obsession and desire being the primary narrative thrust. While all left with a healthy sense of ambiguity, as a young woman, Ellen summoned the spirit of Orlok in her dreams as a presence of comfort, taking the monster as a lover, before his dark presence turned malicious. And now, decades later, Orlok has come to reclaim his lost lover, or else the city of Wisborg will fall to plague and ruin.
Here, we see Eggers’ significant departures from other interpretations of the Dracula story, making a film that is familiar in only the faintest of sketches. Eggers throws off the tragic romance of Coppola’s iconic 1992 Dracula film, replacing it with a much more parasitic relationship. This is also reflected in how this film addresses the psycho-sexual currents in the original text. While Coppola leans into the carnality and the hedonism, Eggers presents any sexual desire for and from Orlok as nothing less than a perversion, embracing a 19th-century sense of morality. It holds the aged Eastern European flourishes of the Bela Lugosi version but removes any sense of remaining opulence from the vampire. In design and appearance, the film also departs from Max Schreck’s monster. Skarsgård is not so much a bat-like creature but modelled after the decaying corpse of a Transylvanian nobleman. Lesions and rot cover his body. This is a creature made manifest from pure evil and the film relies on this perpetual darkness to create an upsetting and all-too-memorable experience. This is a folk-horror vampire, with all of the historical mystique and superstition required.
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| Photo via Focus Features. |
Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is one of Nosferatu’s most distinctive qualities. Blaschke, who shot all three of Eggers’ previous films, captures the story in ghostly whites, ashen hues, and carefully set naturalistic lighting. The use of shadows as a ceaseless, ominous presence while never losing clarity of vision is a feat of lighting and cinematographic excellence that many would try, but few could ever achieve. The clever use of practical sets, matte paintings, and subtle special effects makes the magic of the vampire feel as mysterious as it is thrilling. The atmosphere is more than just the film’s spellbinding visuals. Robin Carolan’s score is eerie and enticing, combining children’s music boxes with violent string arrangements and haunting choral pieces. Louise Ford’s brilliant editing cuts violently from present to memory to dream, creating a vicious swirl of aggressive imagery spliced together in a symphony of darkness. It’s this palpable sense of atmosphere, and the ambiguity layered on top of it all, that makes Nosferatu such an infectious incarnation of evil.
By dragging his audience back into the past, into a time full of mystery and superstition, this retelling of Nosferatu is one of the most effective horror films in recent memory from one of the past decades’ most exciting filmmakers. It is a clever reinvention of an old story, and a legendary original film, that pulls the past into the present in thrilling fashion. It updates the expressionism of the original with all the flourishes of contemporary filmmaking while expanding upon its themes and characters, making a familiar story feel oh-so-new. With explosive performances and a sense of evil rapture, the myth of the vampire finally has fangs again, ready to devour all who come in its way. The sense of tension and foreboding makes the blood of the viewer run cold. Blood runs liberally, from bodies and headless pigeons, drenching the film in gore and death. “Tell me, does evil come from within us?” Ellen asks Professor Von Franz late into the film. “Or beyond?” It’s this uncertainty of origin, of the source of depravity, that fills every frame with nauseating fear. And the darkness has never been so visible.
Nosferatu is now playing in theatres.
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