In the remake-friendly pantheon of classic horror cinema, Nosferatu presents an interesting conundrum. Let’s say, for example, you wanted to make a new version of Frankenstein (as Guillermo del Toro will be doing next year). While you’ll likely put your own unique spin on it, you will ultimately be adapting, in some form or another, the classic story as written by Mary Shelley. With Nosferatu, however, things get a little fuzzier. F.W. Murnau famously staged his original 1922 version of the film as an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula; while the names were changed and some liberties were taken, the story of the film is so recognizably that of Dracula that Stoker’s estate took successful legal action. Yet, thanks to Murnau’s distinctive visual flair and (especially) the cadaverous performance of Max Schreck in the title role, Nosferatu has carved out a space of its own in the public consciousness, a sort of black-metal doppelgänger to the classic vampire story. When one remakes Nosferatu– as Werner Herzog did in 1979, and as E. Elias Mehridge half-did in the blackly comic 2000 metafiction Shadow of the Vampire– they adapt the film’s plot, of course, but much more crucially, they adapt the film’s essence. Nosferatu is not a story, so much as a vibe– specifically, the most rancid vibe imaginable.
There is perhaps no living filmmaker more specifically capable of capturing that vibe as Robert Eggers, the New England-raised director of The Lighthouse and The Witch. Eggers is adept at channeling the arcane and obscure, the historical accuracy of his films so meticulous that they frequently feel unmoored in time (the cottage in The Witch was famously built from scratch using only period-appropriate tools and antique nails). Eggers has reportedly been working on Nosferatu since before shooting his second film, and in many ways it feels like the film his entire career has been building towards. More importantly, it is well and truly Nosferatu, both in story and in feel. At once stately and deeply perverse, Eggers’ Nosferatu will certainly not be to all tastes, but to my eyes it’s one of the best films of the year.
Nicholas Hoult is this film’s naive Thomas Hutter, the Nosferatu-verse equivalent of Dracula’s Jonathan Harker. Hutter is sent deep into the Carpathians to broker a real estate deal for the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, more on whom in a bit). Hutter leaves behind his wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who in his absence takes a severe turn for the melancholic and somnambulistic. I shouldn’t have to tell you that Hutter’s trip to Orlok’s castle does not go particularly well, or that a mysterious “plague” ravages Hutter’s village as soon as Orlok’s possessions reach port. As Ellen’s effects worsen, she begins to suspect a connection between herself and this mysterious force, and, with the help of the eccentric Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), desperately tries to find a way to stop it.
The most distinctive element of Murnau’s Nosferatu, and every other previous iteration, is the image of Max Schreck’s Orlok: bald, gaunt, looking as much like a decaying rat carcass as a human actor. In perhaps his most daring decision, Eggers opts not to recreate this look; Skarsgård’s count bears more traces of the ancient nobleman he presumably was in life, and sports the big, droopy mustache described by Stoker in his book but rarely translated to the screen. But he still feels like just as much of a walking corpse as Schreck, from his papery skin to his glazed eyes to, especially, his voice. The original Orlok, of course, had no voice, and one senses Eggers has put a lot of thought into what voice could match that menace. Skarsgård speaks like a belch from the crypt, deeper than dirt and almost unbearably slow, as if he has not spoken for centuries. His accent is indeterminate but haunting, and I’m not sure if his native language is real or invented; he speaks with a dead tongue, both figuratively and literally. His Orlok is not Schreck’s, but he evokes the same bone-chilling dread that Schreck must have inspired a century ago.
When it comes to wearing his cinematic influences on his sleeve, Eggers is generally no Tarantino; it often feels like his forebears worked in papyrus rather than celluloid. It is surprising, then, how deftly he picks and weaves together bits and pieces from the past hundred years of vampire cinema. The base is Murnau’s of course, but he borrows key imagery and characterizations from Herzog and Mehridge. He also undeniably draws from Draculas proper: the gothic stateliness of Tod Browning’s 1931 Universal production, the lush eroticism of the British Hammer cycle, even the sweeping scope and eccentric effects work of Francis Ford Coppola’s turn behind the stake (there is a moment when the shadow of Orlok’s hand looms enormously over the village which seems to consciously run Murnau’s imagery through Coppola’s aesthetic). It gives one the sense that Nosferatu and Dracula are a living text, and this is simply the next stage of its evolution.
I do not wish to imply, however, that Eggers’ Nosferatu is pure pastiche. On the contrary, he here draws together the themes of his previous films into a dizzying whole. There’s the stark terror of The Witch, of course, and the clash between its uptight puritans and ancient, unspeakable horror. There’s more than a little of the gleefully perverse comedy of The Lighthouse, as well; Dafoe certainly seems to be having just as much fun here playing the kooky ersatz Van Helsing, sinking his teeth into lines like “I’ve seen things that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!” And Eggers takes the epic scope he explored in The Northman and applies it to the true horror on which he made his name. One senses that, with this film, he has found the form in which he will continue through his career.
Perhaps the most interesting interpolation of Nosferatus past can be found in the performance of Lily-Rose Depp. The character of Ellen Hutter was originated in the 1922 film by Greta Schröder, but Depp’s take on the character draws most heavily on Isabelle Adjani. Depp takes Adjani’s Ellen– haunted, tragic, pale– and mashes her up with the actress’s other most famous role: the writhing, feral protagonist in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. The subtext of the character, present in Stoker’s novel and amplified through each subsequent iteration and especially through the Nosferatus, is female repression and the dark urges which coursed underneath Victorian society. Depp’s Ellen brings us the clearest articulation of this yet, contorting in glossolalia under the spell of Orlok, yet with undeniable agency. It’s a remarkable performance unlike anything we’ve seen yet from the actress, or much else we’ve seen in theaters this year.
The same could be said for Nosferatu itself. It’s rare that we get to see a film so unabashedly perverse presented on such a grand scale: a grotesque tale of squalor, necrosis, and sickly sexuality, stretched wide across the canvas of a Hollywood epic. This is grade-A goth cinema, an undeniably personal, adults-only blockbuster in an age of increasingly plasticized cinematic product (it is also, it must be noted, a Christmas movie, making it perfect counterprogramming for those sneaking away from their holiday obligations). Nosferatu certainly won’t be everybody’s idea of a good time, but as a dyed-in-the-wool sucker for the darkest corners of the vampire myth, I found myself beaming from beginning to end.
Nosferatu
2024
dir. Robert Eggers
132 min.
Opens Wednesday, 12/25. Screening in 35mm @ Coolidge Corner Theatre; also playing at Somerville Theatre and theaters everywhere.
