Vampire Vednesday - Nosferatu (2024)

I had never seen a Robert Eggers film.

In fact, my path here, to Nosferatu, is pretty non-linear, and it starts with his third film: The Northman. No, like I said, I never watched it…but I heard good things so when it came out on blu-ray, I picked it up with every intent on watching it long before now. Of course, I can say that about the MANY films in my ‘To Watch’ pile. Later on, I’d come upon his first film, The VVitch, on sale and, again, having heard good things about it…well, that and it was like $5 on blu-ray and I’ll try damn near any movie for that price…so, I picked it up.

Then, the trailer for Nosferatu dropped.

As a fan of Murnau’s original as well as Herzog’s remake, sure, I was going to go see it. Especially with the visuals and atmosphere the trailer created and employed. Now, let’s fast-forward to about two weeks ago (as I write this)…I wanna say around December 15th or so…or maybe closer to the 20th. The girlfriend had brought me to her friend’s house where they were baking Christmas cookies and on TV she had running this astoundingly deep-dive video from YouTube…a fellow named Novum…and its subject was The VVitch. As I sat there, practically transfixed as to how the director practiced his craft (and there’s a reason why I’m choosing this wording) I reminded myself that I really needed to sit down and watch at least The VVitch to be sure, but if I could, The Northman as well, before Nosferatu’s release.

That didn’t happen.

And so we find me in the present, not quite knowing what to expect yet, as per all his films so far, hearing nothing but good things and the arresting images from the trailers that have been released up to this point. Some reviewers already catapulted the film into their top 10 films of the year, others gave it an honorable mention. I won’t lie, I did find myself contemplating jumping onto the hype train, willing myself to liking it before having seen it. But a friend of mine would do that when we were in college, have a preconceived notion of a film before going in, then criticizing it when it didn’t turn out exactly as he had imagined it…and I wanted to avoid that.

Having just come out of my screening, I will tell you this: If you’ve never seen one of Eggers’ films…nothing is going to prepare you for what you’re about to see when you enter into this film. Nosferatu is a film crafted by a master at the height of his powers and anymore, it is such a rare thing to see. As a film set in Wisborg, Germany in the 1800s, there is no question to the authenticity to the proceedings, nothing to jar you out of the atmosphere that Eggers takes his time to weave around you…pulling you into this world. The architecture of the buildings, the dress and attire, even the sprinklings of German honorifics, Herr and Frau, into the language and dialog, all showing the scrutinous detail put in not only by Eggers himself, but all the department heads he surrounded himself with. Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is flawless and honestly, with shadow being one of the most important things in the 1922 original, he needed to nail it. For the majority of the film, we rarely catch a clear glimpse of our antagonist, the vampire Count Orlock. Many times, our only evidence of his presence is his looming shadow and, as I said, this is pulled off to great effect. When we do catch enough light to see the Count, we never see him fully, yet we’re also shown just hints of his full grotesquery. Helping to underscore these visuals is the score provided by Robin Carolan…atmospheric when it needs to be, but also jolting, supplementing the horrors we’re watching onscreen. All the while, I feel like it needs to be pointed out that Carolan also doesn’t forget where and when he is: 1800s Germany. And as such, he brilliantly evokes such classical composers as Bach, Schumann and Wagner to envelope the viewer into the atmosphere, working hand in hand with the visuals.

Given the cast, it should not come as a shock that the performances on display are top notch. Certainly it would folly to expect the frantic mania of performances in the original, so indicative of screen acting in the Silent Film era, and yet there is a touch of that spirit present. Take Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas Hutter, throughout his entire initial encounter with the Count, his fear is extremely palpable. It’s a performance so convincing you kind of have to wonder if Hoult pissed himself so overcome with dread. And it’s right there. On screen. (Well, not the pissing himself…not that I could see anyway.) While his fears ease once he escapes, no part of his performance ever really shakes that dread…as if there’s still a connection between the predator and his victim. This would be a natural segue into Ellen, but I’m going to hold off on that…saving her for last. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been an Aaron Taylor-Johnson fan…finding his turn as Quicksilver in Avengers 2 to be disappointing (of course, I’d describe the entire film that way…) and the fact that he signed on for Sony’s ill-fated Kraven The Hunter didn’t really do much to convince me to pull him out of the dog house. However, the gamut of emotions he runs through as Friedrich Harding, shipping magnate and friend to Hutter, really has me reassessing his skills as an actor. There isn’t a moment you question what he’s going through…even when he’s being a giant prick, you get it. Ah…then there’s probably the only really known-KNOWN quantity of the film, the only performance that I was certain was going to be solid gold…and that it was: Willem Dafoe as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, our Van Helsing proxy. Mind you, cinema has given us some Van Helsings for the ages, Peter Cushing in the Hammer films and Anthony Hopkins in Coppola’s version of Dracula and unsurprisingly, Dafoe takes his place right up there with them: driven, passionate, devoted, all the while gentle and sympathetic. His Von Franz knows what needs to be done and will stop at nothing to see it through but understands and mourns the human toll these actions will undoubtedly precipitate. Ralph Ineson’s Doctor Sievers would merit mention simply on his unmistakable deep, vibrating voice, but the performance, displaying a man grasping so tightly to modern science all the while finally allowing the circumstances to loosen that grip…going from skeptic to believer…is a journey and one that we very clearly get to witness, protesting Von Franz’s actions in early scenes only to become a true-believer during the film’s final act. The fact that neither writer Eggers nor Ineson’s performance skimp on this journey, that we see it drawn out over the film so as not to make the final turn feel cheap or unearned is a major achievement by both.

Let’s give Lily-Rose Depp her own paragraph. Now, I have to be honest, I’ve come to despise Johnny Depp, her father, so it was more than a little difficult to shake that bias even just going into the film. I became intrigued when I had read somewhere that she based her performance on Isabella Adjani, who’d play Ellen in Werner Herzog’s remake from 1979 (okay, Lucy, taken from Stoker, but it's the Ellen role)…but not from that movie. Instead, she took inspiration from Adjani’s performance in Possession from 1981. And just as Adjani’s performance there proved to be challenging for me in that film, so too did Lily-Rose’s performance in Nosferatu. While the Ellen of the silent film is more calm and almost stoic…the stable center of the film…Depp’s Ellen is as if all the mania from Murnau’s silent original was bound up in and unleased by a single person. There are the quiet moments I associated with the character, but then there are fits and outbursts of panic, dread, sexuality and at times even a dash of Linda Blair’s performance in The Exorcist or echoes of Winona Ryder’s Mina from the aforementioned Coppola’s Dracula. Some of these are confounding, some grating. This is no fault of the actress, per se, as it’s very evident that she’s giving it her all and I admit, just the sheer range of emotions and how quickly she had to go from one to the other to yet another still, on a technical level, this is indeed a performance for the ages. I just can’t help but wonder if the choice of inspiration might be the problem for me. And the thing is, I know I’m going to go back and forth on this. I may feel differently after a second viewing, then something else entirely on a third. Plus, let’s be real here, the film is structured in a way that it really is hers to carry. She’s why this is all happening…the fulcrum of the plot…so you have to be invested. For me, the manic outbursts made that difficult, that’s why I say this is a challenging performance: it’s rough and abrasive, yet on some level, you know it needs to be that way…you just have to find a way to meet it on its terms. And I’m not there yet.

From the most recent adaptation of It, we know what Bill Skarsgard can do, even under heavy makeup and we’re definitely treated to such a performance here. Not only is there heavy makeup but as a matter of sheer plot mechanics, he’s also always shrouded in some level of darkness. Ordinarily, one would think that we then only see fragments of a performance, but nothing could be further from the truth. Why? That voice. I don’t know where he pulled that voice from or what kind of place he had to take himself to get there, but holy fuck…all the fear and dread and despair you need from this character are all right there in this voice that has to come from a slowly rotting larynx. This IS what the undead sound like…there’s no question in my mind. That in and of itself would make this a stellar performance but his physicality…watching how he drinks the blood from his victims or hits some of the legendary poses from the silent classic without making them seem forced to all the shadow and silhouette work, it’s all just amazing to sit and take in…all the while underscoring the doom and dread needed to create this film’s atmosphere.

There’s so much more I could gush on about, but I feel like it’s time to wrap this up. While it’s difficult to extol a remake in a Hollywood rife with remakes and sequels, Nosferatu is different. It’s one of those films that you walk out of lamenting that “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore”…and you never realized it was missing until you see it. This movie, from top to bottom, is crafted. Even though I’m sure there’s computer work and images in here, if for nothing else than to create the broader vista of this period’s Wisborg…but likely at least some of the shadows too…everything in this film feels bespoke, created for this film and this film alone. It’s a feeling you got from films of the late 70s and 80s and, by the time the Star Wars Prequels came out, it was gone. There were no test screenings, no committee or board notes from studio execs. This was one man’s vision, championed and rallied around by all those that worked on the film culminating in an experience that, again, was long thought gone. Just as Orlock lingers and pulls at Ellen’s mind, Eggers’ Nosferatu will tug and eat away at you too. This is cinema. This is the art of the moving picture. And it is very much a horror movie…which means those asshats at The Academy are likely to snub it. That’s a shame, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Instead, here, the film gets our highly coveted Hypno-Cat award. This film will remind you why we go to the movies and why we would even seek out horror and dread on the largest screen possible.