Over the last decade, Robert Eggers has established himself as one of the most meticulous auteurs working today, with his exactingly realized worlds occupied by characters undergoing total meltdowns.
Nosferatu is his latest cinematic diorama of dread, a retelling of FW Murnau’s classic silent film of the same name, which is in turn inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (both Stoker and Henrik Galeen, writer of the 1922 Nosferatu, are cited in the film’s credits). Eggers’ Nosferatu is a tribute to Murnau, vampire horror, and silent film, as much of the film looks as if Murnau had modern technology and craft techniques to utilize back in 1922.
Nicholas Hoult stars as Thomas Hutter, a knock-off Jonathan Harkness, whose new bride, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), is plagued by “melancholy” and nightly dreams of some unnamed presence coming to claim her. Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson) diagnoses Ellen with everything from “congested blood” to an “unstable womb”—oh, those wily Victorian wombs, never staying where they’re put!—but really Ellen is the chosen bride of a distant and evil aristocrat called Orlok (an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgard). Seeking to make his fortune, Thomas leaves Ellen behind in Germany—but like, a version of Germany where everyone has an English accent—while he travels to distant Transylvania to complete the sale of an estate to Orlok.
Nosferatu is extremely good at vibes. It looks f-cking astounding, and every frame is packed with detail and dread seeps from every corner. Every shot of Nosferatu is a marvel, from the silver light of the moon to rat-infested crypts to any of a number of shots of rotting flesh, every fresh horror is a visual delight. Aided by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, production designer Craig Lathrop (Eggers is himself a former production designer), and set decoration by Beatrice Brentnerova, Nosferatu is arguably the most staggeringly beautiful film of the year.
But among Eggers oeuvre of f-cking nutcases wilding out in extreme circumstances, Nosferatu is unusually cold. It’s not that the acting is bad—it isn’t—but Eggers’ work is best when his precise control as a visual storyteller is matched by impassioned performances. Nosferatu is short on passion, with only Willem Dafoe throwing himself with full-bodied glee into the role of disgraced professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, the local monster hunter who knows how to get rid of Orlok once and for all. Bill Skarsgard might have been full of glee, but it’s impossible to tell under a metric ton of prosthetics, though his growly, creepy intonation is enough to make Orlok effectively revolting, never mind his actively rotting flesh. Any man who breathes that heavy IS evil.
Everyone else in the film is fully committed to what they’re doing, but what they’re doing is acting as if they’re in a classy Merchant Ivory production. But Nosferatu has full-frontal monster dick in it, get with the program. The performances just need to be so much WIERDER to match the energy of Eggers’ filmmaking and production. He’s the one giving directions, I assume this is the outcome he wants, but the tenor of the performances—except for Willem Dafoe—feels out of synch with how boldly bonkers the rest of the film is. He drafts a whisper of Yellow Wallpaper paranoia into how Ellen and her friend, Anna (Emma Corrin), interact with the world as women in 1838, and Depp and Corrin deliver on a sort of “everything’s fine” nervousness that underscores everything the women say and do when their emotions are treated as inherently hostile, but there isn’t enough of that angle to sustain the film’s 132 minute run time.
The film is plenty gross, though. This has been a great year for body horror, and Nosferatu makes sure we go out on a high, or low, note, as it were. There’s enough gushing blood and body fluids, decapitated animals, and feces to make a Scandinavian black metal band happy. Vampires sucking blood is also upsettingly sexual, appropriate for a story about fear of “the other” coming to seduce nice white English ladies (and men), but also deeply, deeply gross to watch, and somehow worse to listen to. Similarly, in keeping with his meticulous historical artistic design, this is a film that just looks like everything smells like horse sh-t, and everyone has lice.
There are moments when Nosferatu works wonderfully, delivering on a creeping sense of dread, rising hysteria, and the physical suggestion of foul smells. But overall, emotions feel disconnected from visuals, and despite its eye-popping aesthetic, Nosferatu never really connects as more than an exercise in cinematic recreation. Nosferatu is Robert Eggers’ chilliest work, a jewel box of horror occupied by mostly lifeless dolls.
Nosferatu will play exclusively in theaters from December 25, 2024.
