Review: Nosferatu

Robert Eggers, director of films like The Witch and The Lighthouse, has tried his hand with the hundred-year-old story of Nosferatu. Based on Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, Nosferatu is a vampire story of death, desire, and madness set in 1830s Germany. While Eggers’s Nosferatu is rather faithful to past iterations of Count Orlok, particularly Werner Herzog’s rendition in 1979, it doesn’t do much to update the classic tale. That doesn’t mean it isn’t an enjoyable gothic film.

Nosferatu
Director: Robert Eggers
Release Date: December 25, 2024
Rating: R

Nosferatu, like its earlier predecessors, follows Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) as he journeys to Transylvania to finalize the sale of an estate to the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). Hutter’s wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), is haunted by dreams of possession and becomes the obsession of Orlok’s passion and bloodlust. Count Orlok traps Hutter in his ancient castle and travels to the town of Wisborg, Germany, bringing with him the plague and death. Once back in Germany, Hutter teams up with Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson) and Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) to stop Orlok and save Ellen before she fully succumbs to the madness of her possession.

As Eggers demonstrates in his earlier filmography, he is quite adept at creating a cinematic world that both looks and feels period-accurate without losing the horrific atmosphere audiences attribute to gothic horror. This is true in Nosferatu, where the 1830s styles and speech serve to reinforce the shadowy fear that envelopes the characters and the town of Wisborg. 

From Focus Features.

Eggers chooses to use the lighting and cinematography as extensions of these shadows, depicting a world that is simultaneously dark and white. While this makes for some interesting moments of framing, it is unfortunately unable to capture the expressionism of the 1922 version of Nosferatu. In the original, dreams and reality constantly bleed into one another. Here, only Ellen experiences this maddening phenomenon (aside from Thomas’s time spent at Orlok’s castle).

With regards to the acting of Nosferatu, I am a firm believer that Nicholas Hoult was the star of the film. Everyone certainly did a good job, and I loved the Possession-style work Depp did during her possession scenes, but Hoult’s performance as Thomas Hutter was the real center of it all for me. 

From Focus Features.

Skarsgård also did a wonderful job as Count Orlok, but this rendition of Orlok felt rather one-dimensional compared to the previous versions by Max Schreck and Klaus Kinski. Gone were the moments where the audience could feel the weight of immortality pressing down on him, and also gone were the moments of homoeroticism between Hutter and Orlok that defined the vampire. There were also no moments of Orlok’s odd idiosyncrasies that have turned Nosferatu into an icon of cult horror.

What the 2024 Nosferatu excelled at, for me at least, was the depiction of early gendered medicalization with regard to the sexuality of women. Ellen, revealed to be possessed by the Count, is often disregarded by medical professionals and the men around her. Her hysteria is passed off as “too much blood” before the intervention by Professor Von Franz. An occultist, he allows her to “rave on” and is ultimately the one who uncovers the truth and the method to stop Orlok. But in the end, it’s Ellen’s sexuality that dooms her even though it saves her husband and the rest of Wisborg. A cautionary tale against female sexuality or a manifesto for believing women and their pain? Eggers shies away from committing to one over the other. 

From Focus Features.

Overall, Nosferatu is an exercise in revamping gothic horror – the atmosphere and the world Eggers manifests are splendid. While it doesn’t surpass previous renditions of Count Orlok, it’s worthwhile viewing, especially for those who have never seen any earlier version of Nosferatu.