‘Nosferatu’ Film Review: Robert Eggers’ Evocation of the Most Unholy Fears

A scene from ‘Nosferatu’ Photo Credit: Focus Features

make a terrible attempt at witchcraft Nosferatu It is a huge task to write afresh in the looming shadow of FW Murnau’s 1922 work Untouchable. But in the skillful hands of the mind that called forward Witch, lighthouseAnd The NorthmanThis reimagined Gothic fever dream is spectacular, suffocating, and gorgeously terrifying.

From the first flicker of grave light, Eggers transports us to a damp, desolate Wisborg, teetering on the brink of epidemic and hysteria. It’s here that Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen, pale as the moon and trembling with foreboding, drives the narrative. Her innocent real estate agent husband, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), embarks on a fateful journey to Transylvania to finalize a deal with Bill Skarsgård’s awaited Count Orlok.

Borrowing liberally from Bram Stoker Dracula And thanks to Murnau’s bootleg adaptation, the film is pretty terrible, featuring gory scenes and grim inevitability. Without bothering too much with fidelity to his source material, Eggers brings his signature style sensibility to the age-old story: oppressive atmosphere, elemental mysticism, and a dash of strangeness.

The world-building of a horror writer is intoxicating. Visborg’s streets are dangerously rocky, their drains soon filled with disease-carrying rodents. Orlok’s castle, a shabby maze of shadows, feels alive, its walls almost trembling with an ancient malice. Eggers has borrowed the desaturation of Murnau’s expressionist palette, but injected it with his own brand of dread – a visual language that speaks of decay, entropy and the harsh pull of death.

Skarsgård’s Orlok is a revelation. Next, good luck portraying Edward Cullen’s smoldering charm; This creature is a nightmare in the flesh, a corpse-like ghost with crooked fingers and a hide that curdles blood. Yet beneath the strangeness lies something unsettlingly human – a longing that makes him pitiable, no matter how disgusting.

A scene from ‘Nosferatu’ Photo Credit: Focus Features

Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen is clearly the beating heart of the film. Her Creepy Singer Trade at HBO statueTo a new blood-sucking oppressor; Depp’s performance is simultaneously trembling and defiant, a portrait of a woman on the edge of self-destruction and transcendence. Her conversations with Orlok pulsate with an almost unholy electricity, the kind that forces you to look away yet keeps you confused.

If the devil is in the details, then Jim Blaschke’s cinematography is pure, unholy symmetry. Blaschke’s palette is a study in decay: milky whites that pool beneath jaundiced moonlight, blacks that bleed like mold creeping over the edges of the screen. The camera moves with the weight of fear, leisurely and deliberately, making even the stillness hum with danger. Orlok’s silhouette stretches across the crumbling walls for impossibly long periods of time, as if the architecture itself recoils from his touch. He invokes the ghosts of German Expressionism to frame the scenes in exquisite light, preserving every macabre detail for us to marvel at and be overcome by. This is actually session work.

A scene from ‘Nosferatu’ Photo Credit: Focus Features

still, Nosferatu Falters under the weight of his ambitions. The pace is deliberately built to the point of slowness and may prove to be an unexpected test of endurance. Eggers’ fascination with period accuracy also veers into a bit of erotic excess. The dialogue is a peppy mix of Hammer Horror English and their trademark 19th-century formalities, but occasionally drowns the supporting performances in archaic melodrama. While Eggers does his best to connect his cinematic influences from Murnau to Herzog to Coppola, the film often feels at odds with itself.

And one particularly persistent strain of Internet brainrot was, unfortunately, having its way with me – every time the camera paused on Orlok’s disgusting mug, I went from thinking about Jim Carrey’s over-the-top Dr. Robotnik. Couldn’t stop myself. Sonic the Hedgehog Franchise.

real victory of Nosferatu Implicit in this is how it exposes the uneasiness of carnal morality. Eggers forces us to confront our own involvement in Orlok’s seduction. As Ellen stumbles into the vampire’s mustachioed bondage, we too find ourselves slipping into her cycle of lust and hatred that is disturbing, but strangely irresistible. It’s this simple acceptance of the desires hidden within that transcends the cheap base fear of pedestrian horror fare.

Eggers’ Nosferatu This is a film that demands dedication. Not everyone will have the patience for its rapid pace or Baroque excess, but for those willing to sacrifice their body, mind and soul for the Count, this is a treat you won’t soon forget.

Nosferatu is currently playing in theaters