Read @ Joe’s

Director Robert Eggers has already accumulated an impressive resume filled with dark, decisive, and oftentimes meandering movies. The Witch (2015) was an exercise of pure external terror while The Lighthouse (2019) sharply contrasted internal madness. Both were unnerving, captivating stories that were breathlessly presented, yet unevenly paced making a full embrace difficult. With his latest, Nosferatu, Eggers firmly sinks his teeth into genre prime rib that is bursting with flavor but, similar to his other menu offerings, is also slightly overcooked. 

Title: Nosferatu (2024) Director: Robert Eggers Writer: Robert Eggers Studio: Focus Features IMDb Plot: A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake. Joe Says: Robert Eggers successfully conjures a creepy movie that stabs at you like a wooden stake. With Nosferatu, Eggers firmly sinks his teeth into genre prime rib that is bursting with flavor but is also slightly overcooked.

Eggers’ Nosferatu is a reinterpretation of the 1922 silent classic. The original, directed by F. W. Murnau from a screenplay by Henrik Galeen, is a blatant unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Nosferatu (1922) has slight, superficial differences from its source material. The fictional German town of Wisborg has been substituted for London. Count Orlok, the titular nosferatu, looks inhuman and corpse-like, while Dracula’s striking human appearance plays to his charms. The blood of virgins and the power of the rising sun also differ between mythologies, but for the most part, the story is a mirrored drumbeat to Stoker’s.

Set in 1838, Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania, high up in the Carpathian mountains, by his employer, estate agent Herr Knock. Knock’s new client, Count Orlok, has plans to retire in Wisborg and already has his devilish sights on a fixer-upper estate that would have every HGTV host ready to sell away their first born for a crack at redesigning. Knock, of course, is already Orlock’s agent and soon both Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and Hutter’s new bride, Ellen, fall under his shadow. Ellen’s ensnarement becomes a vile rapture as Orlok corrupts her from afar. 

Eggers and DP Jarin Blaschke beautifully set the stage with a dreamlike scene as Orlock’s presence, a wispy shadow, enchants Ellen. All set in a desaturated blue, Eggers, who also adapted the screenplay, lays out his tableau for the remainder of the movie. Akin to his work on The Lighthouse, Nosferatu slips between dreams and reality. Sometimes suddenly. Sometimes subtly. And perhaps a few more times than actually needed. Shot in color, Eggers and Blaschke prefer to highlight the grayness of everything, complete with deep, black shadows, allowing color to be used in a shocking fashion. A dankness and coldness permeates the entire movie. Is that a draft you feel at the back of your neck? Or a bat’s wing?

The primary cast are all believable and enjoyable. Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen is all breathless and eager. Her eyes inducing adult pleasure and adolescent wonder. Nicholas Hoult, who has seemingly grown up on screen, is a terrific young actor and plays to the hero’s role spectacularly, regardless of his brief time as an X-Man, and ignoring his previous outing with a vampiric lord in Renfield. Willem Dafoe, playing the ersatz Van Helsing, Professor von Franz, not only makes his return to an Eggers movie, but also plays with a wink-and-a-nod to his role as Max Schreck in 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire. The vampire here is menacingly portrayed by Bill Skarsgård, who has a commanding, scary presence. Yet unlike Gary Oldman’s glamorous role as Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie, Skarsgård is constantly hidden behind shadows and mustaches and accents that his vile entirety never gains a ne’er-do-well spotlight that the character deserves. He is a voice. He is a shadow. Yet he needs to be – if only briefly – Darth Vader. 

The pacing of the movie itself stops and starts like a chartered horse and buggy, never achieving full acceleration. Although nearly every scene is magnificent to watch, the running together as a whole is at times too much; lacking at others. Perhaps as Eggers masterfully captures the ethereal, he slips too deeply into a dream that the conscious narrative becomes too elusive. 

Eggers does, however, successfully conjure a creepy movie that stabs at you like a wooden stake. He makes shadows sinister and unleashes a dark madness that can swallow up the sun. Nosferatu is a macabre treat that is as stunning as it is creepy; as cold as it is fiery. Truly, Eggers has made a classic horror movie that has lasting immortality. Blood sucking optional.