Robert Eggers' remake of the 1922 horror classic is finely crafted, but oddly lacking at times
Dracula knock-offs have never quite done it for me. There’s ‘The Master’ from the first season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer—an incredibly standard, depthless villain that needed to be dispatched before the series could truly begin to flourish. See also: Barlow from Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. It’s a great novel, but there isn’t much to distinguish Barlow as the primary antagonist.
Then, of course, there are the numerous Draculas that pop up constantly in stories these days, such as in Renfield or Castlevania—he’s even a commonly recurring character in Marvel Comics—all of which serve to somewhat deaden the menace of the villain through sheer ubiquity.
So, was I clamouring for Nosferatu? Given that I’m writing this review nearly two weeks after the movie released—no, I wasn’t. Look, I love horror, and I love Nicholas Hoult, and I love Willem Defoe, and I love it when an unseemly number of rats gather in one location, but this movie was still going to need to do a lot of work to make me love it, too.
Counting Stars
When real estate agent Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) is ordered by his employer to travel to Transylvania to conduct business with the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), Thomas’ wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), begs him not to go. She is unsuccessful, and following Thomas’ departure, begins to suffer fits and visions of an approaching evil, while Thomas himself experiences first-hand the true horror of Count Orlock.
First off, the performances in this movie are amazing. Willem Defoe and Aaron Taylor-Johnson do great jobs in their supporting roles, and Hoult is commendable, too, but Skarsgård and Depp steal the show. Depp’s physicality is at times jaw-dropping, and although Skarsgård is done up in prosthetics at all times (and often shrouded in darkness), he has such a commanding presence thanks in part to a vocal register so deep it could split stone.
The film is also a visual delight. Director Robert Eggers has worked with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke on all four of his films now, and together they have once again crafted something beautiful. Whether it’s disorienting, tight close-ups on actors against black backgrounds or a wide shot of a figure half-seen through a curtain, the film never fails to hold your attention.
Count Down
Indeed, so much of Nosferatu is a technical masterpiece. The claustrophobic cinematography, ominous score and practical sets all work in harmony to create an atmosphere of terror and unease so profoundly effective that it’s almost able to make up for its somewhat weak plot and character arcs.
Nosferatu is a great movie, but it does fall short of being a masterpiece. There’s plenty of subtext to interpret in Ellen’s relationships with both Thomas and Nosferatu, but it was just a little too light on concrete, dramatically developed character change to have much of an effect on me. I was also simply not invested enough in Thomas and Ellen’s marriage to be suitably anxious towards the threat that Nosferatu posed to their relationship—they just felt a little bland at times.
I’m also not one to normally get hung up on plot holes and the like—examining a movie like it’s some kind of logic puzzle is where film criticism goes to die—but a few elements of the ending did leave me with lingering questions about what exactly Character A’s plan was given the actions of Character B, etcetera. I’m okay with a movie not providing an answer to every question it raises, but this was not that. There were simply underbaked plot elements that detracted from the impact of the climax.
What a Drag-ula
And yet, despite my criticism, this a movie that I would certainly be happy to own on Blu-ray. Even though I never quite fell under the thrall of Nosferatu, there is enough style (and just enough substance) for it to be a worthwhile watch.
I’m not sure if it breaks my slight weariness with Dracula and Dracula-adjacent characters, though. For all the hype surrounding this movie, it did very little to rejuvenate the trope and, ultimately, I can’t find a deeper reason for this movie existing than Robert Eggers really liked the original 1922 film and wanted to make it again for a modern audience.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that as a motivator, but I think it results in a film that has very little to say. That doesn’t mean you’ll have a bad time. Far from it. Willem Dafoe plays a disgraced professor of philosophy obsessed with the occult, for God’s sake. I just wish the movie had a little more bite to it.
Thanks for reading my review of Nosferatu. If you liked it, consider checking out my wishlist or buying me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kieranobrien or below.
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