Nosferatu – Accessible, Yet Still Hauntingly Dreamy [Review]

What happens when Robert Eggers makes his most accessible film and ends up remaking one of the most iconic horror movies in history? You get Nosferatu. For fans of Eggers and his brand of moviemaking; it’s not a critique to say that his films are a bit harder to get into for the average moviegoer. They’re weird. Beautiful, but weird. Nosferatu is more of the same but ends up with a plot and stylings that still are weird, but just weird enough to keep interest from his fans and to make it so it doesn’t turn off the average person.

The movie follows the plotline of the original film. A young, freshly married man, Thomas Hutter (played by Nicholas Hoult) is in need of a spark for his career, he ends up on a job to get a deed signed by a very rich man in Transylvania. His boss (played by Simon McBurney) wants him to personally see to it that the deed is signed and that the Count is happy. Thomas leaves his new wife Ellen Hutter (played by Lily-Rose Depp) with his friend, Friedrich Harding (played by Aaron-Taylor Johnson) and his wife Anna (played by Emma Corrin). Thomas quickly realizes when he gets to Transylvania that the locals know something evil is afoot at Count Orlok’s castle. He’s plagued with visions/reality of the locals sacrificing a virgin and digging up corpses.

Orlok gets Thomas to sign the papers, but something else ends up being signed away. It’s revealed that Orlok and Ellen are intertwined because of Ellen’s previous “melancholy” in her life; which seemingly ended with her marriage to Thomas. it’s a beautiful and tragic way to portray the deep depression and sadness that some of us go through in our lives and particularly in adolescence. Orlok isn’t a tragic figure like in the original 1922 film though. He’s disgusting, gross, foul, maniacal, and conniving. He’s the worst traits of humanity in something that is no longer human. Bill Skarsgard has now taken up the mantle for two iconic horror characters and completely made them his own.

The rest of the cast includes Ralph Ineson as Dr. Wilhelm Sievers and Willem Dafoe as Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz. Both are awesome in their roles as the two dueling forms of intelligence at the time of the film; modern medicine and science against the study of the unknown and the occult. Some of the things that Orlok brings along with him include plague, and his arrival in Germany seems to bring more than just that. People are more crazy, insane, the streets run afoul with rats. It’s a stunning reversal of some of the more somber visuals in the first part of the film.

That brings me to the visual stylings of Nosferatu. The aesthetic here captures the old style of German expressionism that the 1922 film perfected. It’s dreamy, almost foggy, like you’re half awake and half asleep. It also captures the feeling of those films with longer takes and a less is more kind of attitude. That being said, this isn’t a shot for shot remake in any way.

Eggers captures his own style with plenty of moments of sheer terror. I found myself at multiple points entranced by what was on screen, only to snap out of a stupor, realize that there’s some incredibly well-built tension going on, that lingers, and lingers just long enough for you to get a bit nervous, and then finally hit the audience with a payoff. It’s a masterclass in ratcheting up tension with simple camera moves or changes to the scenery. At points, you know something is coming, at others, Eggers hits the audience with a scare, and then goes on like nothing happened. It very much feels like the characters do, they’re drifting between planes of reality, into visions, dreams, and then back to the real world.

It all goes on, with some truly excellent work from all involved. Willem Dafoe and Lily-Rose Depp really carry the film alongside the previously mentioned fantastic monster work from Skarsgard. Seeing this film only strengthens my desire for Dafoe as a version of Van Helsing. Nicholas Hoult gets the hardest role in the film having to balance his life falling apart, almost dying at the hands of Orlok, and basically coming back to life only to find out his wife has been entranced by the same vampire that tried to kill him. He takes a step back for Ellen in the end, allowing for her grand and poignant finale.

The ending shot of Nosferatu is one of the most striking and powerful images on film in recent memory. The entire ending of the film is tragic but still keeps up a beautiful vision of one of the most iconic and famous movie monsters ever. There’s so much under the surface of this film that’ll be debated and bandied about by film fans, but through the entire runtime, Nosferatu keeps up an unparalleled excellence. There’s plenty of scares, monsters (man and vampires), and commentary here on all things in our world, but Eggers steers the ship while still remaining true to the original source material. It’s one of the best examples of how a remake in the right hands can be more than just a soulless cash grab.

Nosferatu releases in theaters on December 25th.

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