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Nosferatu (2024) -- a review

Director Robert Eggers remaking Nosferatu is a perfect fit. Eggers, whose films are all period pieces that are expertly researched down to how people speak in a specific time period, manages to entice the viewer into his stories by making them believe they are really in the era they are watching onscreen. The mundane complaint that Hollywood is running out of ideas is constantly being proved wrong by Eggers, who is telling his stories from across the breadth of time.

And his take on Nosferatu is no exception. The original 1922 silent film Nosferatu was born out of the desire of telling the Dracula story from Bram Stoker’s seminal novel, but without paying for the rights. So certain names and locations were changed, and presto: we wound up with a classic silent film that still holds up exceedingly well, thanks to its extremely creepy vampire that became an enduring menace in his own right.

Egger’s Nosferatu is a faithful retelling of the silent film tale, with the same basic story of how the vampire, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), comes to 1830s Germany thanks to the efforts of a solicitor, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), who is innocently naïve regarding the Count’s true darker intentions, until it’s too late. Orlok, now free of the Transylvanian countryside--and its people, who know all too well who and what he really is--can spread his evil once more in a new land by focusing on a finding new bride, Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp).

The difference here is the reinterpretation of the story, notably in how Count Orlok looks. He’s no longer the rat-faced, pointy eared animated cadaver from the silent film and the 1979 remake. Eggers re-imagined Orlok as a large, powerful-looking Prussian soldier with a mustache, and it works. Bill Skarsgård, who did such a good job in bringing Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King’s IT to life, does a superb job of creating another memorable supernatural villain. Skarsgård projects plenty of menace and power with intense makeup and a deep, booming voice, and Eggers wisely keeps him in the shadows until just the right, terrifying moments.

Lily-Rose Depp is also very good as Ellen Hutter, Orlok’s seemingly weak-willed, overwhelmed adversary. Despite the fact that Willem Dafoe is basically playing this film’s version of Doctor Van Helsing, the entire story is an epic and well-done slow burn build up to the confrontation between Ellen and the Count. And Eggers still manages to offer plenty of surprises and plot twists despite following the original story faithfully. He takes some concepts from the original film and amplifies them nicely.

I was glad to see that Egger’s Nosferatu was a hit, and I was also surprised at the reactions of some horror movie fans online, who said they were uneasy with the 1830s setting that this movie took place in. Dracula, the Bram Stoker novel, was published in the 1890s, and many of the best Dracula films (notably the Hammer horror films) were also period pieces. The 2024 Nosferatu, being a riff on Dracula, might take place in a long ago era, but its nightmarish images and themes are as timeless as all of the best cinematic horror tales, and Nosferatu ’24 deserves its place alongside the rest of them. --SF

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