Nosferatu Review
Nosferatu is a film unlike any others made in recent years for the big screen. It’s methodical pace draws you deeply into the world that questions the innocence and corruption of humanity. Like a slowly burning candle, Robert Eggers remake brings light to the recent cinema landscape. Its slowly flickering light breaks through the darkness rhythmically, building to a satisfying conclusion.
Full disclosure, I do not remember the original Nosferatu, I saw it years ago in a film course in high school, but I unfortunately do not remember the plot details. When you explore the history of the film you learn that essentially it was a rip off of Dracula with certain names and some events changed so that a german production company could produce it without worries of copyright infringement from Bram Stoker's widow, who did not agree to allow filmmakers use of the intellectual property at the time.
This remake does not deviate from that framework, outside of moving the main location to Germany it largely resembles the plot of Dracula with names and some aspects of characters and events changed. However, what is changed fundamentally uproots how the themes of Dracula would normally be perceived.
When you think of Dracula you may think of Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or Gary Oldman’s interpretations of the character, while they may have been scary they could present themselves as almost human looking in a way that would please the eye enough to lure in unwary travelers. Nosferatu does not receive such a luxury, he instead looks like a twisted malformed demon, what comes to mind when you conjure the imagery of a creature of the night. A creature that doesn’t just hunger for blood but for the corruption of the innocent as well.
Ellen Hunter (Lily Rose Depp) and her husband Thomas Hunter (Nicholas Holt) are young newlyweds that are repeatedly told that they are together “by providence.” Especially by Thomas’s boss who offers him a higher position and large commission to go out to a castle to meet a count Orlok, who is looking to buy property in their city to escape his dreary castle that's far from civilization. Little do they know that Orlok has long had a fascination with Ellen and he will stop at nothing to corrupt her innocence and take her as his bride.
Bill Skarsgård (under a tremendous amount of makeup as tends to be the case for him with a lot of his roles) does a tremendous job playing the titular count as does the rest of the cast, although Willem Dafoe as Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz really stole whatever scene he was in. I was initially disappointed that he wouldn’t play Orlok as that would have been a great callback to Shadow of the Vampire, but I can understand that Eggers wanted to take this film in a slightly different direction from the original.
I strongly recommend this film, I will say though that it has pretty overt sexual themes and lots of gory moments, these are spread out quite well and never seem overindulgent, but there are some who may be put off by these aspects. Furthermore, I must also note that I have around a 50/50 split of friends who have seen this that either gave it 5/5 or walked out. So if you cannot handle a slower paced art film please avoid this movie, it isn’t quick, it really builds up tension for awhile, this isn’t meant to be a gory slasher film like Terrifier, so please don’t expect that going into it. This is 100% an art film with vampires. If you go in with the expectation of an art film though and are okay with it you’ll love this film.
