When a new year in cinema begins with a film as horror-filled as Nosferatu, so saturated with dread, it feels worryingly like a harbinger of things to come. But maybe it’s just me. It’s just a movie. And a very good one.
It’s a meticulous remake of the German silent film of the same title, made in 1922. Again, it could just be me, but it seems like something of a milestone that cinematic inspiration can now go back an entire century or even longer. Not only that, but the 1922 film was released just 25 years after the publication of Bram Stoker’s celebrated novel Dracula, on which it was based. So this version feels umbilically connected to the original story.
However, there may be some ghostly and unfortunate rumors. Stoker had died when the film was released, but his wife Florence was too alive to sue the producers for intellectual property theft. She won. They were ordered to hand over all prints and negatives of the film for destruction.
Fortunately, some survived. And here we are, with writer-director Robert Eggers enriching a list of credits that already includes The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019) and The Northman (2022). He is a master of chills.
Nosferatu is set primarily in a German coastal town, Wisborg, in 1838. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is the beautiful but mentally fragile new wife of the devoted and innocent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), a real estate agent employed by Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), a clever guy with a lot to be clever about.
When Herr Knock tells Thomas that he needs him to travel to a distant land carrying details of a Wisborg property, the instructions are more sinister for us than for him. The buyer, “from a very ancient line of nobility,” is Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard). He lives, says Herr Knock, in a “small country… east of Bohemia… isolated in the Carpathian Alps.” Oh!
When a new year in cinema begins with a film as horror-filled as Nosferatu, so saturated with dread, it feels worryingly like a harbinger of things to come. But maybe it’s just me. Pictured: Lily-Rose Deep as Ellen Hunter in Nosferatu
It is a meticulous remake of the German silent film of the same title, made in 1922.
Nosferatu is set primarily in a German coastal town, Wisborg, in 1838. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp, above) is the beautiful but mentally fragile new wife.
When Herr Knock tells Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult, above) that he needs him to travel to a distant land carrying details of a Wisborg property, the instructions are more sinister for us than for him.
There is a powerful sexual charge in this story, but not many would admit to being aroused by it. In fact, it’s best to avoid anyone who does. In the photo: Scene from Nosferatu
Only the eccentric Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe, above), an occult expert, seems to know what is going on.
And here we are, with writer-director Robert Eggers enriching a list of credits that already includes The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019) and The Northman (2022). Pictured: Nicholas Hoult (left) with director Robert Eggers (center)
In his spooky Transylvanian castle, Orlok, also known as the demonic vampire Nosferatu, has developed some sort of psychic connection with Ellen dating back to their teenage years. He is powerful enough to take him to Wisborg, along with an army of plagued rats. Soon, Orlok’s evil has taken hold of the Hutters’ friends, the Hardings (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin), and he is unleashing his malevolence on everyone and everything. There is a compelling image, replicated from the 1922 film, in which his shadow appears to consume the ignored city.
But he’s only come looking for Ellen, and only the eccentric Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), an occult expert, seems to know what’s going on. In a modern context, Orlok is an obsessive stalker, but Ellen seems to encourage him. There is a powerful sexual charge in this story, but not many would admit to being aroused by it. In fact, it’s best to avoid anyone who does.
The performances are uniformly fantastic. Depp in particular is superb, while Dafoe, in his third Eggers film, makes his usual change of scene, even eliciting a laugh when the professor muses: “I’ve seen things in this world that would have made Isaac Newton jump back into it.” he”. his mother’s womb.’
But most of the praise belongs to Eggers, a joyful director who, like his previous films, only more so, has created an uncompromising nightmarish world with consummate vision and painstaking skill.