‘Nosferatu’: Robert Eggers’ Vivid Dracula Reimagining Drips With Gothic Terror and Erotic Tension

Alci Rengifo

Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” lives entirely in its gothic atmosphere. Most Dracula fans know that the inspiration behind this film is F.W. Murnau’s 1922 classic of the same name, considered one of the great masterpieces of the silent era and German cinema during the Weimar Republic. Eggers is not remaking the Murnau original but wholly reimagining the concept. Murnau was famously, and unofficially, adapting Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” novel, while changing names and details in hopes to avoid copyright infringement. Eggers borrows from both sources and filters them through his striking style which is unique in how it lives outside of our time. Eggers is that rare filmmaker who doesn’t merely recreate an era but inhabits it. This is a gothic experience that thinks and behaves with no concept of any subsequent centuries. 

The outline of the story remains about the same. In 1830s Wisborg, Germany, young husband Thomas Hutter (Nicolas Hoult) works for a real estate company and has been tasked with selling a property to the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). Thomas has to leave his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who is being plagued by nightmares, and make a long journey into Transylvania to meet the count in his grand, secluded castle. Despite being warned by local gypsies to keep away from the count’s realm, Thomas keeps going until he finds himself in the low-lit corridors where Orlok seems to float through, demanding the traveler have some wine and be his guest. Clearly, a dark force is at work and Thomas soon realizes the count developing an interest in his wife when he gazes at her photo in a locket. Suddenly incapacitated by the count (including via some late night bites), Thomas is powerless when Orlok makes his way to London as Ellen’s visions turn into violent convulsions.

Few viewers walking into a theater will be unaware that Orlok is clearly a vampire. Eggers has kept the count’s name from the Murnau original as a clear homage, but he’s essentially still Dracula. In 1979, Werner Herzog shot his own brilliant remake, “Nosferatu the Vampyre,” featuring a great Klaus Kinski as the bald, pale count with the Dracula name restored. Herzog’s film was pure atmosphere, Eggers aims for more visceral horror closer to his excellent 2016 debut, “The Witch.” Whereas the first “Nosferatu” films open with slow burner eeriness, this new one begins with screams of despair from Ellen entrapped in one of her nightmares involving Orlok’s unnamed presence.  It sets the tone for what works best as a gothic extravaganza. The plot becomes secondary. Its structure stays close to previous interpretations such as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” 

Aesthetically, “Nosferatu” is Eggers’ grandest indulgence yet. Renowned for his detailed research into the eras of his films, the director and his regular cinematographer Jarin Blaschke create a sense of place so vivid, you can imagine someone from 1838 feeling right at home in every frame. Furniture, glassware with Victorian era emblems and the very texture of Wisborg’s streets feel like a combination of night terror and vintage photography. Visually the film can also work as a metaphor for the relationship between Western and Eastern Europe. Thomas travels into Romania as if entering an alien land where gypsies greet him at an inn, playing their music and acting strangely towards the outsider. In the dark woods fit for a fairy tale, he ventures to the castle where Orlok appears mostly in shadow, with the kind of mustache that used to be associated with Turks, Slavs or other peoples from those eastern lands feared by the west. His voice is a deep, rumbling bass and not the sophisticated charmer of past vampire counts. 

Once Thomas receives his fateful bite and the count gets into his crate for a ship voyage to Wisborg, “Nosferatu” remains rich in ambiance but also goes into full-throttle horror. Here we don’t get the Orlok creepily wandering around a ship at night, only for daybreak to reveal crew members he has killed. Instead, he tears into throats as raging storms blow, filmed with the framing of classic Romantic era paintings. Eggers nods at another F.W. Murnau classic, “Faust,” with a shot of the shadow of the count’s long-nailed hand extending over Wisborg. At home, Ellen sleepwalks and has erotic fantasies that border on demon possession. While everyone gives strong performances, Lily-Rose Depp really pushes it all to the edge with her contortions and screeching feel of a woman losing absolute control of her mind and body. No dark romance for her plight but the utter grip of evil. Her close-ups reveal a pale visage as memorable as Isabelle Adjani, but infused with suffering. Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), Thomas’ boss and Orlok’s secret minion in Wisborg, is again portrayed as going insane while waiting for his master, but Eggers has him evoking his superior surrounded by candles, sitting in a pentagram. It’s that kind of dark energy that courses through the film and makes it more of an experience than a narrative to follow.

Familiar characters from the story all return with strong casting. They just don’t get enough screen time amid bombast. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a wonderful snob and skeptic as Friedrich Harding, the husband of Ellen’s sister Anna (Emma Corrin), who is so blonde, innocent and thus perfect for meeting tragedy. Willem Dafoe, who has become an Eggers regular since their wild stream of consciousness film “The Lighthouse,” would seem perfect casting for Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, an occult expert who is a new variation on the character of vampire hunter Van Helsing. Dafoe once played a great version of Orlok in “Shadow of the Vampire,” a fantastic 2001 film that wonders if Murnau’s classic was so good because he hired a real vampire. Dafoe does chew the scenery when needed but ends up not doing much in the overall plot. Dafoe has great fun cackling before a burning casket as plague-ridden mice scurry about, yet he recedes behind the urgency of Thomas or Ellen’s derangement. Eggers should have kept it all about Orlok’s obsession with Ellen, which is where the film circles back to in the end when she must choose whether to give herself to the vampire or suffer the consequences.

The elegance of how Murnau and Herzog end their versions is brushed aside from a more morbid yet erotic take. Eggers’ concludes that a monster can still fall prey to the wants of the heart, even if it means utter doom. It’s quite effective since Bill Skarsgård is not made to look like some seductive creature of the night but a walking, near-rotting entity. The “It” actor is becoming a fixture for horror roles of utter transformation and here he is barely recognizable. His body is made to look not ready for burial, but as if dug out after years in a crypt. Robin Carolan’s music score then colors it all with genuine elegance and orchestral flourishes that are truly Gothic in the classic sense. It’s another act of cinematic transportation from Eggers whose best film, “The Northman,” rattled some with how faithfully it summoned the very mindset of Viking culture. That was a feverish film of fire and mad visions. “Nosferatu” comes close even with a somewhat scattered structure. It conjures genuine unease and the terror of unseen things. We all know the basics of this story, Eggers succeeds in bringing out the feelings and textures with great sensuality. 

“Nosferatu” releases Dec. 25 in theaters nationwide.