Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu” was a skillfully made image of the 1830s in Germany – a predictable victory for the veteran director who spent 10 years on the film. Eggers’s film history boasts immersive, tonal psychological thrillers. Notably, “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” made him well suited to take on “Nosferatu.” However, when placed outside of Eggers’s repertoire and into that of the series of films based on the original story of “Nosferatu,” his remake fails to make a meaningful addition to the canon despite his promises to provide a feminist interpretation.
The famed original version of “Nosferatu” begins with the story of “Dracula.” In 1922, an unauthorized silent film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula,” was released in Germany. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” rose to notoriety as the first vampire film and a classic in the horror genre despite blatantly copyrighting Dracula. It’s a fitting beginning for a film that has been remade many times since. Eggers’s 2024 version succeeds Werner Herzog’s “Nosferatu: The Vampyre,” a 1979 Lynchian remake with an almost identical storyline — a Transylvanian vampire descends upon Victorian Germany. Each depiction demonstrates differences in the cinematic styles and technology as well as the changing social tides of their eras.
Vampires have existed in mythology across cultures. Early depictions held great symbolic significance, representing contagion — notably rabies and the plague — and sexual temptation. In one example, origins of the figure trace to Mesopotamian and Jewish myth, Lilith, a female demon who shapeshifted between animals and fed on blood. Today, vampires have maintained their capacity for symbolism but not without trite commercialism (Team Edward!). Eggers took on the challenge of convincing a modern audience that vampires are somewhat scary, recapturing the original intent of the figure without irony or innovation. This straightforward goal paired poorly with his attempt to sexualize the story.
Count Orlok — no, the vampire’s name is not Nosferatu — suspends our contemporary impulse to mock the monster as cliché. Played by Bill Skarsgård, the character’s uncanny stature, skeletal fingernails and breathy, Transylvanian drawl preserves the gravitas of the original film. Allusions to the 1922 film’s iconic shots of slinking shadows contrast added jump scares to maintain an eerie pace. The demise of our protagonists — Ellen and Thomas Hutter, played by Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult —- is not forced through violence and gore but coerced from the characters own actions.
All three Nosferatu films center on the marriage of Ellen and Thomas. Thomas, a real estate agent who travels to Transylvania to sell Count Orlok a new estate in Germany, and Ellen, who is deeply in love with her husband, demonstrate varying degrees of agency in each film. Herzog’s Ellen, played by beloved Possession actress Isabelle Adjani, was whimsical and steadfast, while the original Ellen held loyal to traditional marriage roles. Eggers’s script explicitly writes Ellen’s psychosexual relationship with the vampire into the forefront of the tale, but his attempt to bring a fresh nuance to the sexual undertones of Nosferatu are smothered under a somber dedication to the original plot.
The memorable first scene of our newest Nosferatu captures darkness over the German town, overlaid with the sound of Ellen moaning — whether from pleasure or pain, we cannot tell. The audience develops an intimate physicality with Ellen, affirmed continuously as she is possessed by nightmares that cause her demonic contortions. Depp’s performance is a centerfold of the film, bringing a tortured wildness to Ellen that no other Nosferatu dared to acknowledge. Eggers sets the stage for a powerful examination of Ellen but fails to center her perspective throughout the film.
Throughout the film, it is revealed that Ellen developed a sexual relationship with the vampire when she was a child, willing him to her with lonely prayers — a plot point unique to this version. The vampire’s return to Germany came as a result of her unconscious mind calling him the night before she married Thomas. The crux of Ellen’s character development arrives when she reveals this to her husband — her shame turns to madness, and she slips into a demonic fit, declaring her competing attractions to Thomas and Count Orlok. This scene clarifies the secrets condemning our cursed heroine but not her motives, conflating her genuine desires with manic evil. Ellen is destroyed by her sexual repression — something that is striking to see performed but does not necessarily set her apart as a modern iteration of the character.
Ellen’s sexuality is integral to the plot of the film, but is weakly portrayed. In a movie lauded for period-consistent costuming, the grotesquely rotting, overtly mustached Transylvanian nobleman might lend to a historically accurate vampire — irony intended — but makes for an unconvincing object of attraction. The relationship between Ellen and the Count provided less of a commentary on the demonization of female sexuality in the 19th century, and more an earnest representation of female sexuality, demonized. Ellen’s obsessions with Thomas and the Count resign her to a powerless death, not made any more glamorous by passive references to her sexuality.
As in the preceding films, Count Orlok is defeated when Ellen sacrifices herself to the vampire in order to save the town from his curse. Eggers’s adaptation was obsessed with the notion of the “fair maiden’s willing sacrifice” — a caveat not emphasized in the prior films — as though with one word, the innocent sacrifice became a feminist hero. Any meaningful conclusion that may have been drawn from Ellen wrestling with her sinful desires is lost once she pays for them with her life. It’s possible a film about Ellen’s sexual agency might end with her living, not sacrificially murdered in an unsettling sex scene that falls short of enthusiastic consent. Herzog devised his own end in the 1979 adaptation as Thomas himself is revealed to have transformed into a vampire, to represent the eternal damnation of modern bourgeois society. The story of Nosferatu might simply be an opportunity for great filmmaking, but the symbolic vampire demands to serve as a launchpad for greater meaning, accomplished by Herzog more than Eggers.
Eggers’s movie is rich and complex, despite the oversimplification of his female lead. The occult is creatively executed through a visual dramatism that solidifies “Nosferatu” as a horror film — although one more fitting for a dreary Hanover winter than Halloween. Willem Dafoe’s morally conflicting professor Albin Eberhart von Franz also contributes to supernatural worldbuilding. Most supporting characters carried weight, particularly in tender moments from Anna Harding, played by Emma Corrin, and off-hand perversions from her husband Friedrich Harding, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson — both unimportant roles in prior versions. If Eggers hadn’t himself claimed in an interview with IndieWire Film Review that his “Nosferatu” would highlight Ellen, the depth of his ensemble might have won me over. In this case, glimmers of intrigue throughout a film defined primarily by its mood cannot convince me that this directorial feat had any profound intention.
Still, Eggers’s film demands attention, perhaps bringing the vampire back from the dead for a new generation of creatives. One thing is for sure, I won’t be able to watch a movie with the exact same plot as “Nosferatu” for a long while — sorry Dracula!
Rating: ★★1/2