Robert Eggers is back, and frankly, I don’t think we deserve him, given how badly we let him down in re: The Northman, a totally f-cking rad movie that basically no one saw. And yet! Robert Eggers is humble, he is magnanimous, he is a GIVER who will GIVE to us even though we are TAKERS who do not deserve his generosity and kindness! And by “kindness” I mean another totally f-cking rad movie.
This time, it’s a remake of Nosferatu, the 1922 F.W. Murnau silent classic, which is an “unofficial” adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (Dracula is a shambles as a novel, but as an idea that just keeps giving to culture, Bram Stoker really turned his rampant xenophobia into a winner). Nosferatu has previously been remade by Werner Herzog with the 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre, and someday I am going to triple-bill the hell out of these movies. Pump this weird long-finger vampire sh-t into my veins all day long. I love Count Orlok, the weirdest of cinematic monster boys.
Count Orlok is here played by Bill Skarsgard—yes, good—and Nicholas Hoult stars as Thomas Hutter, Nosferatu’s version of Jonathan Harkness—also very good casting. Lily-Rose Depp stars as the besieged wife, Ellen Hutter, and maybe I’m still annoyed at losing hours of life I can never relive to The Idol, but this feels like a downgrade from Anya Taylor-Joy, who was originally attached. Generally, I think rounds of Hollywood Sliding Doors tend to work out for the best, but this might be one of those cases where it does not. Lily-Rose Depp has never impressed me as an actor. The film also stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, and Willem Dafoe. Can’t wait to see the young guys try to out-Dafoe Dafoe on the press tour.
Eggers’ Nosferatu looks meticulously crafted, as we now expect from a Robert Eggers production. And it’s not that Eggers doesn’t use digital effects—he and every other filmmaker absolutely does—but there are so many obviously practical effects in this trailer, I love the handcrafted look of it. It reminds me a little of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, a movie which is good, actually, not least in part due to its use of practical effects. I especially love that shot at the end of the trailer, of the cloaked figure with the dogs. Eggers is one of the few filmmakers who understands how to use natural light and still make that which he wants seen legible to his audience.
I can’t wait for Nosferatu. I hope this film is at TIFF (The Witch and The Lighthouse both screened there). A new Robert Eggers’ joint might actually make up for making me sit through Joker 2.
