Nosferatu (2024)
Directed by Robert Eggers
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu unfolds like an ancient curse unearthed, a film that lingers in shadow and silence, pulling its audience into a world where death feels omnipresent and irresistible. Rather than merely reimagining F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic or Werner Herzog’s brooding 1979 remake, Nosferatu becomes a fevered meditation on decay, obsession, and the fragility of the human spirit, as if Eggers were peeling back the layers of a corpse with a grim fascination that transforms the material into something as unsettling as it is hypnotic.
The story, set in 1830s Germany, begins with a familiar rhythm: Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), a young real estate clerk, is sent to Transylvania to finalize a property deal with the enigmatic Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). Hutter’s journey is marked by warnings from superstitious villagers, his path winding through a landscape that seems to grow darker and more unwelcoming with every step. When he arrives at Orlok’s castle, he encounters a creature who feels less like a man and more like a force of nature. Orlok, skeletal and otherworldly, casts a shadow over every moment of the film, his presence felt even when he isn’t on screen.
What distinguishes Eggers’ Nosferatu is its atmosphere, crafted with a meticulousness that borders on obsession. The cinematography by Jarin Blaschke is a masterclass in chiaroscuro, the interplay of light and shadow evoking both the German Expressionism of Murnau’s original and the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich. Every frame feels alive with texture and menace, the desaturated palette draining the world of warmth and vitality, creating not merely a Gothic horror film but a visual dirge—a haunting meditation on the inevitability of death.
Bill Skarsgård’s portrayal of Count Orlok is a study in restraint and menace. Unlike Max Schreck’s grotesque, rat-like creature or Klaus Kinski’s sorrowful predator, Skarsgård’s Orlok is something in between—a skeletal figure whose physicality is as unsettling as his aura. He speaks in a guttural, almost inhuman voice, his words crawling out of the depths of his throat like the sound of earth shifting in a grave. Skarsgård’s performance is a slow, creeping terror, more felt than seen. And yet, there’s an odd, discordant note in the character’s design: the mustache. It’s a choice so peculiar it risks derailing the immersion, a small but jarring detail in an otherwise seamless vision.
At the film’s heart is Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen Hutter, a role that transforms the traditionally passive heroine into a figure of psychological depth and agency. Ellen is a woman haunted not just by Orlok but by her own fears and desires, her vulnerability balanced by an inner strength that becomes crucial in the film’s final act. Depp’s performance is astonishing, her portrayal oscillating between fragility and defiance. Ellen is a character grappling with forces beyond her comprehension, her ultimate sacrifice rendered both tragic and empowering.
Eggers amplifies the psychosexual elements inherent in the vampire mythos, turning Ellen and Orlok’s interactions into a grotesque dance of attraction and repulsion. Their connection is less about seduction and more about violation, Orlok’s obsession with Ellen framed as an invasive hunger that consumes her even as she resists it. This dynamic complicates the film’s undercurrent, probing power, desire, and agency with a rawness that feels immediate while echoing something older, almost eternal.
The supporting cast, while inevitably outshone by Depp and Skarsgård, brings a needed depth to the world around them, grounding the story’s more operatic moments in something tangible. Willem Dafoe, as Professor Albin von Franz, brings a sardonic energy to his role, his character blending scientific curiosity with a morbid fascination for the supernatural. Dafoe’s von Franz is no stoic Van Helsing; he’s a man who seems to revel in the chaos around him, his gleeful eccentricity providing a counterpoint to the film’s pervasive gloom. Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas Hutter, on the other hand, struggles to leave an impression. His performance is competent but lacks the emotional weight needed to ground his character’s arc. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin, as the Hardings, are little more than decorative, their roles serving as reflections of the townspeople’s hysteria rather than fully realized individuals.
Eggers’ pacing is deliberate, bordering on punishing, but this slowness is integral to the film’s sense of dread. Nosferatu unfolds like a creeping sickness, its horror not in sudden shocks but in the inevitability of what’s to come. Eggers uses this pacing to immerse viewers in his world, allowing the tension to build to a suffocating crescendo. While some may find the film’s deliberate tempo alienating, it feels like an essential part of Eggers’ vision—a reflection of the inexorable decay that lies at the story’s core.
Thematically steeped in rot, Nosferatu presents Orlok as less a character than a manifestation of entropy, his presence spreading death and corruption wherever it reaches. Eggers connects this decay to contemporary anxieties, drawing parallels between Orlok’s pestilence and the global pandemic that still lingers in collective memory. The film’s exploration of societal collapse feels especially resonant, its depiction of Wisborg’s descent into chaos a grim reflection of the fragility of human order.
Eggers’ reverence for Murnau’s original and Herzog’s remake is evident in every frame, but Nosferatu is not content to be a mere homage. It is a dialogue with its predecessors, a film that acknowledges their legacy while carving out its own identity. Eggers builds on the foundations of these earlier works, using their visual language and thematic concerns as a springboard for his own exploration of fear and decay. The result is a film that feels both timeless and immediate, its Gothic sensibilities grounded in a modern understanding of horror.
Where Murnau’s Nosferatu was a product of its time, reflecting the anxieties of a world reeling from war and disease, Eggers’ version speaks to a contemporary audience grappling with its own existential dread. The film’s exploration of corruption—both physical and moral—strikes with unsettling clarity, as Orlok becomes more than a vampire, embodying the blurred line between humanity and monstrosity while reflecting the audience’s own hidden impulses.
Nosferatu reclaims the vampire myth, tearing away the romantic veneer that has softened its edges in recent years. Eggers’ vampire isn’t a brooding antihero or a figure of tortured allure; he’s a being driven by a relentless, primal hunger, his presence a stark reminder of death’s inescapable reach. This return to the raw, folkloric origins of the vampire feels urgent and revitalizing, offering a sharp contrast to the polished, sentimental depictions that have drained the genre of its menace.
As the film builds to its chilling climax, Ellen’s sacrifice carries a terrible inevitability, her death becoming both a victory over Orlok and a defiant act against the forces threatening to consume her. It is a moment of profound tragedy and empowerment, the culmination of a narrative that has been as much about reclaiming agency as it has been about resisting evil. Eggers ends the film on a note of lingering unease, its final image a haunting reminder of the cost of survival.
Nosferatu is a film that seems to exist in its own unhurried sense of time, asking not for the audience’s patience but their surrender. It doesn’t prod or jolt; it smothers, slowly, like a fog settling over a darkened town. For those willing to give in to its rhythm, there’s something hypnotic about the experience, as if Eggers has tapped into a primal pulse of fear and decay. He’s not out to transcend horror—why should he? Instead, he burrows into it, using the genre’s tools not as a safety net but as a scalpel, slicing into what it means to be both fragile and monstrous.
Eggers doesn’t just revive Nosferatu, he lets it fester, filling it with a raw energy that feels sickly alive even as it reeks of rot. The film pulses with contradiction: life and death, desire and repulsion, beauty and ugliness, all coexisting in uneasy harmony. This isn’t Gothic horror as an aesthetic playground; it’s Gothic horror as an excavation, a digging into the dirt of human fear and longing. At its core, Nosferatu does what the best horror can—it doesn’t let you escape yourself. It holds up its pale, distorted face and dares you to keep looking.
