Robert Eggers’ dazzling re-adaptation confronts and overcomes hard truths about Vampire lore
From The Witch to The Northman, Robert Eggers’ films are defined by his meticulous dedication to period authenticity, while seamlessly infusing his historical accuracy with timeless, sinister themes. Collaborating with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and production designer Craig Lathrop, Eggers crafts stunning visuals that transport audiences to Viking-era Iceland, Puritan colonies, and now with Nosferatu, the wilds of the Carpathian Mountains and the bustling metropolises of turn-of-the-century German port cities. These richly recreated settings are more than just visually immersive—they serve as moral landscapes where characters’ intense desires collide with the rigid codes of their societies. This clash fosters a gripping tension, as the fragility of these seemingly immovable worlds is exposed by the primal instincts lurking beneath. In this long-awaited passion project, Eggers brings this dynamic into sharp focus, reframing F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized adaptation of Dracula as a hypnotic, deadly battle of control between a cursed woman and an unholy man, both out of sync with the centuries to which they belong.
Much like the original Murnau film, Nosferatu follows young newlyweds Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) and Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) as they struggle to embark on a new life together. Still in debt to his childhood friend Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Thomas seizes on the chance to become a partner at his real estate firm by venturing out into the forests of Transylvania to get Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to sign the last of some crucial real estate documents. But Ellen knows what all will soon discover–Orlok’s relocation to Germany is a long-festering plan for the vampiric Count to reunite with her in a consummation of a psychic–and romantic–bond groomed since Ellen’s childhood. As Orlok’s arrival wreaks havoc on Germany, Ellen and Thomas seek answers from crazed Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) before it’s too late.
While Eggers’ take on Nosferatu remains as reverent to the source material as it does its period setting, it’s how Eggers imbues his film with a sharp, modern sensibility that makes Nosferatu a tale worth re-telling. Eggers and an astonishing Depp grant this Ellen a vast interior life compared to the original. Society may find it easy to write off her anguish as another bout of feminine melancholy to be treated with as much Ether as possible; however, Ellen is a woman more tortured by the world’s inability to heed her warnings of the dangers around them. It’s clear Ellen possesses a powerful gift, yet she is undermined and underestimated at every turn–to the point where she heeds “modern” society’s conditioning and rejects her powers, finding solace in love and marriage as soon as possible. Ellen’s victimized and patronized–and told to be grateful on top of it all.
It’s this promise that first leads Orlok to answer Ellen’s general call for comfort–and it’s the same that leads Ellen into a healthier (by comparison) relationship with Thomas. Their dynamic has a sincere passion for one another–yet their shared, imposed desire to conform to the world’s demands (have a family, a house, a steady job where Thomas is the breadwinner) drives them apart as much as it reunites them. What’s more, Orlok’s growing power over Ellen reveals just how much power Thomas fails to deliver–calling out the ineffectual bandaid that is Thomas and Ellen’s relationship, which takes on physical extremes as Orlok’s distance closes. Nosferatu‘s standout sequence, as Thomas and Ellen derangedly try to reckon with each other’s flaws and desires, showcases just how powerfully Depp and Hoult have inhabited the darker angels of their characters’ natures.
In sharp contrast to this is Skarsgård’s Orlok–who Eggers and his company of dang-ass freaks have realized as the least sexy vampire in Centuries. With the film’s tantalizing marketing campaign urging audiences to “succumb to the darkness,” viewers may expect a lecherous gothic romance that would make Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula call for modesty. Nosferatu delivers on its primal desires, yet even by modern standards as much as the film’s Imperial German setting, Orlok’s lurching, imposing nature is defined by a craven menace that’s more revolting to the senses than appealing. By Orlok’s words, he is “an appetite, nothing more:” a true creature of the night, he has no opportunity or need to put on dubious charms when he can pounce and feed, a process that goes straight for the heart and requires full undulation of his lanky frame, turning himself into a lamprey-like full-body pump. It substitutes the seductive allure of Gary Oldman for the conquest-driven nature of the O.G. Vlad the Impaler, just sans people on spikes.
Nosferatu’s treatment of Vampires is less of a repudiation of the “sexy vampire” and more of unearthing the uncomfortable truths about them that some willingly bury beneath the surface. The call to “succumb to the darkness” isn’t some tragically romantic sentiment–it’s the creepy calling card of an undead incel, one that removes its victims of an agency that society may have already convinced them to give up.
Here, Eggers makes no qualms about the fact that Count Orlok, for all his talk about willing devotion, has groomed Ellen since childhood, instilling a sense of inevitable romantic destiny. Orlok may sincerely believe that–but to Ellen, this is an arranged marriage from hell–conditioned for years by the world Ellen lives in as much as by Orlok himself. The experience has warped what should be a self-actualizing power and her ability to desire into tormenting feelings of shame and self-loathing. Eggers has already drawn early criticism for this approach–but I’d say that this thematic blast is Nosferatu’s whole raison d’être.
There’s nothing sexy about decades of emotional manipulation–and Eggers knows that we must realize this on the same level as the desires we keep locked up deep within ourselves. Given the fatalistically patriarchal nature of Ellen’s waking life from birth to inevitable death, it should come as no surprise that Ellen has grown to romanticize death to the point of dreaming about marrying Death itself. In that aforementioned standout scene, Ellen’s confession and unpacking of her psychological trauma pulls her on invisible strings between the lover she consents to and the one hell-bent on controlling her, a puppet long-drained of agency and hope.
Ellen’s sole ally–and for all of Thomas’ intentions, I mean that–is Willem Dafoe’s crazed Professor Von Franz, who’s similarly shunned by a world that to him has been “blinded by the gaseous light of science” (among other verbal bangers). Taking inspiration from 1922 Nosferatu’s equally occult-steeped producer Albin Grau, Von Franz has embraced the modern revelations of scientific theory without compromising an even deeper passion for more otherworldly beliefs. As much as characters like Thomas, Harding, and even former student Sievers (Ralph Ineson) bury their heads in the sand for a rational explanation for Orlok and Ellen’s madness, only Von Franz recognizes the validity of Ellen’s warnings, as well as her worth when it comes to stopping Orlok–precisely because no one else is willing to. The delicious irony is that no one else has reason to listen to him either. This mutual decision to play into each other’s madness leads Eggers to his most modern deviation from Murnau’s film, one that grants Ellen the self-determination that Orlok and his world have feverishly tried to strip from her.
Nosferatu, like The Witch, recognizes how both impulsive and logical it can be to bend towards evil and villainy, especially when the world demonizes one’s gender or abilities from birth. But where The Witch sees Evil as an inevitable endpoint, Eggers flips the script with Nosferatu to grant Ellen the opportunity to funnel her gifts into a tragic victory. In a key confrontation, Von Franz urges one to “know and crucify the evil within us;” Ellen is more than able to do such self-reflection–but after millennia of being placed on such a social pedestal, it’s a gift that all men in her world seem to lack.
It’s an approach that extends to Eggers’ diabolically unsettling depiction of Orlok himself and the hypnotic influence he exerts on others. Skarsgård’s absence from the film’s marketing isn’t some PR ploy. Much like Junji Ito’s romantically manipulative undead creature Tomie in Ataru Oikawa’s 1998 adaptation, Nosferatu’s Count Orlok is calculatedly removed from the frame almost until the film’s final act. While his voice may infiltrate every speaker in the sound system, Skarsgård lingers on the edge of every frame or is kept at a remove cloaked in darkness or masked by firelight. Especially in the film’s other best scene, as Thomas arrives at Castle Orlok and meets his surrogate employer over an unearthly dinner, it’s as if Blaschke’s camera can hardly bear to look at him as much as others. Yet, despite this urge to look away, Blaschke and editor Louise Ford’s year-best cinematography and editing, hide invisible cuts in camera movements to create hallucinatory jumps in time and space with the fluidity of unbroken cuts–as if trapped on the same conveyor belt of fate that Orlok wholeheartedly believes in.
Yet, for all of the victimhood that Orlok, Thomas, and the world impose upon Ellen, it’s she who breaks this spell–unafraid to look her psychic kidnapper in the eye and find the light to overpower him and hopefully reject the darkness we’re told to succumb to.
For so many films this year about power and control, it’s inspiring that Eggers’ Nosferatu is the one to so openly reckon with desire, depravity, victimhood, and reclamation on such a spellbindingly even keel–silencing its doubters to create a film that will hopefully remain as timeless as its inspiration.
Nosferatu opens in theaters on Christmas Day courtesy of Focus Features.
