With imagery quite literally conjured from the deepest bowels of darkness, it’s clear why Nosferatu has been on the mind of Robert Eggers since he saw F. W. Murnau’s silent classic at the impressionable age of nine. The director’s fourth feature is his most assured and accomplished, an impeccably crafted, knowingly humorous, and perhaps too-rigid odyssey into the depths of true evil where one can feel Eggers’ obsessions flow through every nocturnal frame. While The Northman was evidence he could work in a bigger playing field, his latest is the ideal marriage of focused, character-driven frights of his first two features and the imaginative world of his Viking epic where no detail was left unconsidered. As Nosferatu relates to the vampire tales that have come before, from Murnau to Herzog to Coppola, the experience isn’t seeing how the director reinvents the wheel, but precisely how he honors this timeless myth with an exacting, full-bodied vision in all its evocative, erotic, gory gothic horror.
We’re once again in Germany, 1838, and Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is tasked with heading to the remote castle of Count Orlok (a truly unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård) to finalize his purchase of a new estate in their town. By completing the treacherous voyage, Thomas would secure a position in his firm, thereby being able to provide a better life for his wife Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp). As revealed in the film’s frightening opening moments, Ellen has previously summoned Count Orlok, forging a psychic connection causing death-obsessed, trance-like fits of hysteria. During Thomas’ journey, Ellen is put under the care of the town’s suave, smug shipping magnate Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin). Hewing closely to Murnau’s deeply influential classic in structure, Eggers draws more attention to Ellen and her Possession-like convulsions, tamped down by tight corsets and an abundance of medicine by the patriarchal society. The subject of gaslighting and suppression by the men attempting to control her mind and body around her, fulfilling her lustful desires is the only path to salvation for all in the city.
Exuding both tenderness and fierceness, Depp’s performance is the beating, bruised heart of Nosferatu. Fueled by a morbid fascination with death as Ellen telepathically connects with Orlok, Depp’s physicality in portraying these fits and spasms––as eyes roll into the back of her head, limbs contort, and Orlok’s menacing voice pours through her mouth––is otherworldly in execution. In a film meant to exude a cold, chilling effect, Depp brings the most entrancing sensations of doom across the impressive ensemble.
Hoult caps off his major fall as the naive cuck of a husband, a character meant to succumb to the pervasive darkness and fitting as an audience surrogate for reacting to the terror inflicted upon him. The less revealed about Skarsgård’s performance the better, but his heavy-breathing take on the lucifugous legend is so imposing and unrecognizable that I’d watch an entire documentary about how it came into being.
As occult expert Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, Dafoe brings a jolt of winking humor just when the film needs some brevity. Paired with fellow Eggers regular Ralph Ineson as the doctor looking after Ellen, their camaraderie in uncovering and vanquishing the coming evil is worthy of at least a few spin-off films. That evil is exemplified in human form via Simon McBurney’s mad, pigeon-eating Herr Knock, minion of Orlock and champing at the bit to realize their plans of all-consuming death and destruction.
Per Eggers’ previous work, there’s an exacting precision to Nosferatu that creates the quandary of a perfect object. The production design of Craig Lathrop is immaculate, transporting one to the gloomy, candle-lit Germanic Europe locales with a startling sense of authenticity. Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is so pristine in its vision of total darkness (and what lurks in the shadows) that the film should be prohibited from ever being streamed, where shoddy bitrates can never truly do justice to the nocturnal palette. As Eggers and Blaschke have proven so adept before, the many one-takes give a sense of a total command, granting more power to the actors while genuine scares are mined from the patient pans across rooms to uncover horrors that lurk in the corners.
This rigorous methodology makes for thrilling viewing, but it also brings a tinge of suffocation. There’s little room for any other moods, unlike the more mysterious, tender moments found in Herzog’s masterpiece or the erotic and operatic vividness of Coppola’s ambitious version. Eggers knows the devil is in the details and leaves no stone unturned in that regard, creating an all-consuming dread befitting the project. Yet for coupling this craft with an adaptation of a timeless tale, there’s a pre-programmed feel as the elegantly composed, inevitable pieces lock into place, leaving much admiration but little inner mystery.
Nosferatu is a feast for the senses, so transportive in its world-building that one can almost sense the legion of rats scurrying below their feet and feel the chill in the air when Orlok glides through the moon-lit window to guzzle blood. It’s also with a plethora of indelible wintry images, no counter-programming for the holiday season: a shot of snow falling in the middle of the night as a carriage approaches in the far distance is among the most evocative cinematography of the year. Chilly, bleak, and nightmarish, Eggers has crafted the most technically impressive version of this story, a movie about needing to face and know total evil in order to conquer it. As we head into an ominous new year for the country and the world at large, a death-obsessed film of bad vibes is arriving at the perfect moment.
Nosferatu opens on December 25.