THE STORY – An ancient Transylvanian vampire stalks a haunted young woman in 19th-century Germany.
THE CAST – Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin & Willem Dafoe
THE TEAM – Robert Eggers (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 132 Minutes
With each film, amateur historian and professional filmmaker Robert Eggers has become closer and closer to a genuinely mainstream film. The imagery of the bone-chilling puritanical horror story “The Witch” exerted a hypnotic pull. Still, the period-accurate dialogue and deliberate pacing caused many horror fans to feel pushed away. The nautical Lovecraftian nightmare of “The Lighthouse” went over the deep end of weirdness as its two lighthouse keepers slowly went mad at their isolated post. Alexander Skarsgård tore through armies of Vikings like an animal in “The Northman,” but the Norse mythology deep cuts proved alienating to many.
But, with “Nosferatu,” his long-gestating take on the popular silent vampire film inspired by Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Eggers has finally found the perfect vehicle for his brand of historically accurate horror period pieces. His typically minute attention to period detail is on full display, as is his knack for building atmosphere. This time, however, the familiar story gives the audience a head start, which enables him to sucker punch them with a film that, despite the prestige period trappings, offers a bracingly modern take on vampire lore. While his previous films could be seen as imposing, heavy castle doors, “Nosferatu” throws those doors wide open, letting the chill of the winter air wash over you. The film’s “Succumb to the darkness” tagline is no mere statement; it’s a promise. Give yourself over to Eggers for two hours, and you will succumb to his vision.
As with Murnau’s silent original, this “Nosferatu” takes place in the 1800s in Wisburg, Germany. Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), recently married to the lovely Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), has been hired to work at the offices of Herr Knock (Simon McBurney). Knock immediately sends him on assignment to deliver documents to a client, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), and get them signed. Orlok is a Transylvanian noble who desires an estate in Germany, and Knock has found a suitable fixer-upper in Wisburg. Thomas stops for the night in a Transylvanian village where the unfriendly locals warn him to stay away from the castle and witnesses a strange ritual in the middle of the night. When he finally arrives at the castle, he is overcome by dread as Orlok’s appearance, demeanor, and voice frighten him. While trying to leave the morning after the papers have been signed, Thomas stumbles upon an ornately designed coffin and discovers Orlok sleeping in it. The count wakes and tries to trap Thomas in the castle, but he escapes, later being revived by nuns who tell him that Orlok is a demon. Knowing that Orlok is after Ellen, Thomas races back to Wisburg at the same time as Orlok ships himself, his coffin, and hundreds of rats to Wisburg via boat. Will Thomas be able to save Ellen from this monster?
While the plot outline follows the original very closely, Eggers shifts the story to center on Ellen. The film opens with her crying out for a source of comfort, an angel or friend, only to be answered by Orlok himself. He claims she has awakened him from his slumber and that he will now possess her, which he does in the first of the film’s genuinely frightening jump scares. This opening scene features all the visual trickery and hallucinatory atmosphere you’d expect from a vampire film, backed by a score that starts in the realm of childish dreams and then escalates into a waking nightmare. The precise framing and elaborate camera movement immediately announce the film’s artsy ambitions, but the content is pure supernatural horror, designed to send chills down your spine. As the film continues, Ellen’s psychological distress grows, as she starts having epileptic seizures the closer Orlok gets to her.
Reframing “Nosferatu” as a story of women’s mental and sexual health in the 19th century is a stroke of genius, and Eggers gives Ellen several incredible scenes where she tears into the period’s societal norms with the venom of a cornered snake, including a tour de force showstopper when the Hutters are finally reunited. Ellen feels so constricted by expectations, even from the one person supposed to love her beyond anything in this world, that she has a full-body freakout, ripping her bodice in frustration. Depp gives a knockout performance, gyrating and contorting her body with fearsome commitment. Channeling generations of female rage, loneliness, and longing, Depp fully gives herself over to the material, at times genuinely feeling like a woman possessed – by a demon, sexual desire, and the righteous fury of someone who knows the source of their pain and terror even when everyone around is telling them that they know nothing. Horror usually gets shunned at the Oscars, but Depp is the latest in a string of horror leads that deserves the recognition, and very well could get it.
She’s not the only Oscar-worthy performer here, either. Hoult gets the lion’s share of screen time in the film’s first act, and while it’s amusing to see a horror film so thoroughly committed to having a male lead who’s essentially a damsel in distress, Hoult makes Thomas’s fear viscerally real. As his eyes widen, his breathing becomes faster, and his voice starts to pitch higher, you can feel his fear in a way that films rarely allow us to see from men. Of course, when you have Skarsgård’s Orlok as the cause of such fear, it’s relatively easy. Eggers and his genius cinematographer Jarin Blaschke keep Orlok’s vampiric visage hidden in shadows and low light as long as possible, constantly building tension as the audience struggles to make out what he looks like. His voice, however, comes through as clearly as a bell in the overwhelming sound mix, which makes it sound as though Orlok is inside your head. Skarsgård worked with a vocal coach to drop his voice an octave for the part, rendering his voice as unrecognizable as his appearance. The rumbling aggression of his voice perfectly plays against the precise physicality of the performance – every movement has been minutely calibrated right down to his fingers – in an outward manifestation of Orlok’s past patience and increasing hunger.
The supporting cast is just as committed as the leads: McBurney and Willem Dafoe are having a blast as the raving mad Knock and the occultist doctor, who is the only person to believe Ellen and fight for her rights, respectively. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin are heartrending as the Hardings (friends of the Hutterses), whose dismissiveness towards Ellen’s fears seals their ultimate fate. Ralph Ineson’s gravelly gravitas is a perfect fit for the doctor they call upon to help Ellen, who finds himself out of his depth.
Throughout his career, Eggers has brought together a talented team of artisan collaborators to bring his cinematic visions to life, and “Nosferatu” feels like the peak of their work thus far. Linda Muir’s elegant period costumes trap the women and men in ornamental cages while completely reimagining Orlok as an almost Slavic noble swathed in furs. Craig Lathorp’s production doubles down on these directions with stately German interiors that carefully denote the class differences of the people who inhabit each space, contrasted with the rusticly regal ruins of Orlok’s castle, a maze of cold stone walls, heavy wooden doors, and imposing iron gates. Blaschke shoots everything with dreamlike fluidity and chilly texture, washing everything in icy blue and warm golden hues. Editor Louise Ford stitches these jaw-dropping shots with the hallucinatory rhythms of dream logic while keeping everything grounded in reality; it’s a waking nightmare that no one can escape.
Robin Carolan’s score indulges in horror tropes while carving out a distinct sound all its own, providing as much forward momentum in its slow march towards daybreak as the visceral editing and sweepingly serpentine camera moves do. The incredible makeup work for Orlok takes inspiration from the Black Plague, turning what was (barely) subtextual in the original film into text as his rotting, pockmarked flesh suggests a leper as much as a vampire, something the film’s clever sound mix plays around with, too, surrounding Orlok’s dread-inducing voice with the sounds of bats, rats, and other vermin. Everything comes to a head in the film’s awe-inspiring climactic sequence, as thrillingly cinematic a final showdown as has ever been put to film, ending with a pair of the year’s most immaculately staged and lit images.
As the person responsible for bringing all these talented creatures together and creating beautiful music of the night out of their craft, Eggers displays a mastery that may be unmatched among filmmakers of his generation. His years-long obsession with “Nosferatu,” including the decade he spent refining his vision for this film, has borne delicious fruit; his screenplay is littered with dialogue that recontextualizes the story completely, making it feel fresh. The contemporary relevance of the plague that Orlok brings to Wisburg is unmistakable, a stroke of genius only outdone by his focus on the 19th-century female experience. All vampire stories since “Dracula” have had an element of psychosexual commentary to them. Still, none have gone so far as Eggers’s “Nosferatu,” explicitly commenting on rape culture and the harm men have done for centuries by disregarding women’s intuition, feelings, and connection with their bodies. From small moments like Harding telling Thomas that his wife is pregnant before telling her to big moments like Ellen’s emphatic rebuttal of Harding’s treatment of her, Eggers drives home his point without ever becoming didactic or letting this social commentary overwhelm the film.
After all, this is still a horror film, and Eggers’s priority is to make something horrifyingly visceral, and he succeeds with flying colors. Every aspect of the film has been carefully calibrated for maximum impact, and the atmosphere becomes positively electric whenever the deliberately paced period drama gives way to the intense terror of Orlok’s presence, whether near or far. This can lead to some scenes initially feeling somewhat laborious, as your racing pulse needs time to slow down, but this is all part of Eggers’s masterful control over tension and release. The deeper into the film we go, the more intense things get, until finally, it becomes so intense that it explodes in a full-on symphony of horror. To watch Eggers’s “Nosferatu” is to place yourself in the hands of a master storyteller at the peak of his craft and then scream with glee as he puts you through the wringer. The film is stately and refined in its craft, but all of that craft is being used to tell a viscerally frightening horror story about bodily autonomy. Simultaneously classical and ultra-modern, this is not just the best version of this story yet put on film; it is one of the best films of the year.
