For those keeping score, Dracula was basically the entire reason I got into horror movies specifically and then into film in general. But that Dracula (the 1931 Universal version, starring Bela Lugosi) wasn’t particularly terrifying; he was more interesting to me because, unlike most other movie monsters, he looked human, which to me was scarier.
But when I first saw the 1922 silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror by the great German expressionist filmmaker F.W. Murnau, everything changed. It was scary, for one thing; second, that vampire did not look like us. He was feral, grotesque, and embodied the kind of corruption of the human soul that only wanted to corrupt others, especially the innocent. Now technically that vampire, Count Orlok, wasn’t Dracula, even though the stories were virtually identical. But none of that mattered to me in my pre-teen years; this guy was a real fanged, pointy-eared vampire.
Some may forget, but when Werner Herzog took a crack as Nosferatu in 1979, he simply called him Dracula and told that story faithfully (to a point). And now we have writer/director Robert Eggers’ (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman) take on the count, which is simply called Nosferatu and features Count Orlok as an entirely different cursed creature, one that resembles Dracula as described in Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel. Here, he's complete with a bushy, Eastern European mustache and flesh that doesn’t look well preserved, no matter how much blood he drinks (blood keeps Orlok alive but it doesn’t keep him young and free from decay).
To make matters more complex, Eggers fully acknowledges all of his influences, by saying his Nosferatu is “inspired by” the screenplay of the 1922 film (by Henrik Galeen) and Stoker’s Dracula. But none of this matters if the movie is no good, and fortunately for horror fans and collectors of timeless cinema, his film is magnificent in its oppressive atmosphere, creepy performances, and tale of violent obsession that is frighteningly relevant today.
The film begins as a tale of a young, recently married couple, Thomas and Ellen Hutter (Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp, respectively). Thomas is an up-and-coming agent at a real estate firm, and he is sent by his boss, Mr. Knock (Simon McBurney) to broker a deal for a Transylvanian count in the market for property in the fictional German town of Wisborg, where they all live. But the count named Orlok is old-fashioned and wants the deal done in person, so Knock sends his young agent on what could be a months long road trip to finalize the paperwork. There’s no real reason to recap the story of Orlok/Dracula, but suffice it to say that it turns out Orlok (in the beginning, played in the shadows by Bill Skarsgard, making him even more of an nasty presence) has had an obsession with Ellen for quite a while—one might even say he’s been grooming her since she was a child, albeit from a distance—and he’s finally ready to make his move, while simultaneously getting rid of her husband.
The film tracks Orlok’s journey via ship and accompanied by a small army of rats (by all account, this Nosferatu has the largest number of rats ever assembled for a film, and they’re all real), while Thomas barely escapes death and makes his long trek home to save his wife from the Count’s clutches. The movie is front-loaded with an incredible cast, including Willem Dafoe as paranormal psychologies Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz, one of the only scientists who knows anything about fighting and killing vampires; Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Friedrich Harding, who allows the ailing Ellen to stay with him and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin, from Deadpool and Wolverine) while Thomas is away; and the great Ralph Ineson as Ellen’s physician.
But as cool and unholy as this new version of the Count may be, the heart and soul of the film belong to Depp and Hoult, whose characters endure physical violations and mental cruelty that Eggers underscores with one of the darkest color palettes imaginable—the film is practically black and white, which seems entirely by design.
Nosferatu could have been just a good-looking film with powerful, in-camera visual effects, but it is truly bolstered by some of the best performances of the year and a masterfully ascending wall of tension that takes over the film, leaving its audience riveted and twitching on the brink of flipping out. I have complete faith in Eggers as a filmmaker, but even I was worried that he would somehow miss the mark on this timeless story; quite the opposite is true, and we’re all the better for it. It’s still not especially scary, but this was always meant to be a story about torment and dread, and this Nosferatu is overflowing with both.
The film is now playing in theaters, including the Music Box Theatre, where it is screening in 35mm.
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