‘Nosferatu’: The Lovelorn Arthouse Vampire

Overwrought and overthought, Robert Eggers’ cerebral creepfest Nosferatu forsakes hair-raising and spine-tingling for carefully curated arthouse-homage spooks. There are jump scares and shrieking violins aplenty, plus hell hounds, rat infestations and maggot-covered flesh for shock value. But its otherwise politely outré approach to the demonic powers-that-be—bespoke black-and-blue monochromatic moonlight landscapes of handsome mansions, or foreboding castle interiors bathed in fireplace oranges—lean closer to perfume-commercial haute couture than it does unearthly earthiness. Even the rotting corpses seem to boast a well-buffed sheen of stylish spectacle. It’s all a bit too slick to be genuinely unsettling.

NOSFERATU ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Robert Eggers
Written by: Robert Eggers
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe
Running time: 132 mins

Those familiar with F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film Nosferatu will know it was the first major depiction of a vampire in cinema. And while it’s not technically based on Bram Stoker’s novel, its story beats—which Eggers mostly maintains—are very similar. In 1838 Wisborg, Germany, newly-wedded estate agent Thomas Huller (Nicholas Hoult) must travel to a remote, gypsy-ridden country east of Bavaria and sell a prime piece of Wisborg real estate to a mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). But the Count has an ulterior motive, which ties into his unusual obsession with Thomas’ wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp). And Orlok’s relocation to their small German town will end up bringing death to all around him. 

For Eggers, that material makes for foundational fear—and should be a perfect match for the high-minded horror director. His first film, The Witch, was a startling supernatural spectacle that proved his bona fides for well-tempered mood and atmosphere, an assertion only made more emphatic with The Lighthouse, his potted portrait of two self-destructive salty dogs. The Northman, Eggers’ big-budget big-swing variation on Hamlet, seemed to collapse under its own swaggering-saga weight, but still boasted some of the most arresting vignettes of the past few years. 

Murnau’s stone-cold German classic was a formative experience for Eggers when the budding filmmaker was younger, and his long-gestating remake has been percolating for years. No less an auteur than Werner Herzog already remade his fellow countryman’s “Symphony of Horror” in 1979, with the stunningly beautiful Isabelle Adjani as Ellen. But the vampiric monster in that revisionist redux, played by Herzog stalwart Klaus Kinski, was more faithful to Murnau’s iconic Count Orlok, the bug-eyed, rat-toothed, spider-fingered phantasm that Max Schreck conjured with such searing success.

Eggers here enlists Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgård, to be his Transylvanian terror—but studiously and consciously veers so far away from the canonical that he comes up with a wheezy, walrus-mustachioed Eastern European who looks like a cross between a moldy Cossack and an asthmatic 1970s Math teacher with a bad combover. Scary, he is not. 

And the waifish Depp plays Ellen, which means that Thomas’ newlywed bride is more of a heroin-chic heroine: all sunken eyes and jutting cheekbones, about as voluptuous as a celery stalk. Her main character trait is convulsing violently whenever her visions of the vampire overtake her. Depp is virtually epileptic throughout this movie, showcasing an admirable Linda-Blair array of shaking, contorting, twitching and vibrating. I’m not too sure if this still counts as acting, but it’s tremendously impressive as a physical feat of stamina.  

Hoult’s Thomas does his own fair share of convulsions, but spends more time conjuring different facial expressions of petrified hysteria. Unfortunately for the audience, watching scared people is very different from actually being scared. 

Eggers takes one major liberty with Nosferatu, which is to add an overt Van Helsing type to the mix: Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), an ostracized occultist who does much to goose the stiff-lipped proceedings with his singular sense of demented intensity. It was Dafoe, after all, who played a fictional Max Schreck in 2000’s dark comedy Shadow of the Vampire. He’s got the receipts to make hay with Murnau’s material.  

The film’s modern take on Nosferatu is to make it Ellen’s story first and foremost: to her, Orlok is a forbidden desire that started appearing in her childhood nightmares and never completely disappeared. He is her secret shame, and she is the only one who can really stop him. It’s a sly improvement on Coppola’s dopey “Love Never Dies” conceit from his 1992 adaptation of Dracula, which made beautiful young Mina the centuries-old soul mate for a lovelorn vampire. 

But Stoker never wrote Dracula’s inner thoughts in his seminal epistolary novel; and Murnau never made Orlok anything more than a bloodsucking demon. Eggers humanizes his girl-crazy vampire a bit too much, romanticizing him just enough to make him mildly pathetic. Better to have him be solely the projection of our wildest emotions and darkest fantasies instead of just another jilted lover.