Nosferatu ★★★★

Lurking in the shadows is an evil. An evil waiting for an invitation to emerge and grow back into the force it can be, and in Nosferatu’s opening scene, it receives that invitation from Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp). It is death. It is a demon. It is whatever horrors one can conjure up in their subconscious in the dead of night. She was young and innocent, calling out into the night for anything to come by her side. One voice heeded that call, she swore an oath to it, and set the events of writer/director Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu into motion. A remake of F.W. Murnau’s horror classic (which was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Nosferatu is a chilling and eerie film, seeping into one’s spirit and providing a truly haunting experience. There have been countless vampire films over the years and Nosferatu has even been remade before – by Werner Herzog as Nosferatu the Vampyre – and Eggers’ adaptation is destined to stand amongst the very best.

Years after her invitation in the night, Ellen has married Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult). He is a real estate agent who is assigned to travel out to a remote castle in the Carpathian Alps to meet with the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) – the being whom Ellen betrothed herself to years ago – to handle the paperwork for his move to Wisborg, Germany. Ellen, possessing psychic powers, warns Thomas not to go, fearing that she will lose him and knowing what could be unleashed on this trip. Nevertheless, the new husband is keen to provide for his wife and embarks on the mission, entrusting Ellen’s care to their friends the Hardings, Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Anna (Emma Corrin). As he will soon discover, the trip is a cursed one. He is merely there to fulfill his unwitting end of the horrifying bond that Ellen entered into with Count Orlok. As Orlok’s arrival in town nears, he brings plague and Ellen’s physical and mental conditions worsen. It will soon be incumbent upon Thomas, Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson), and Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) to investigate, research, and fight back against this encroaching shadow of Count Orlok in Wisborg and the threat it poses to Ellen.

Throughout his career, Eggers has developed an ability to evoke the setting of his stories like few others. All of his films – The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman – benefited immensely from meticulous production design that captured the feeling and mood of their settings. Their settings all felt alive. Now, Nosferatu where the legend of a vampire is not just something whispered in the villages, but something that truly exists. As before, the production design – by Craig Lathrop, who has worked on all of these films with Eggers – is essential to the film’s success. It truly feels like it has emerged from a nightmare. The exterior details of Count Orlok’s original castle in the alps, distant and shadowy, invoke an immediate sense of danger. The decrepit home he moves to with a ratty gate, steep drive, and signs of external decay, offers no respite either. Even smaller spaces like the office of Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), Thomas’ boss, are so intricately designed with little nooks all over that make later searching for clues about which client Thomas was assigned to see all the more challenging. 

DP Jarin Blaschke takes full advantage of these creepy settings with fantastic cinematography. The long shot introducing Orlok’s castle is especially striking, though much of Thomas’ trek there is incredible. Moving through this snowy forest as a ghostly carriage approaches in the distance, the shot-reverse-shot sequence of him stalled in the road, watching this carriage approach with paralyzing horror in his face, and then back to the carriage fast approaching and seeming to almost float towards him is chilling. The lighting, especially, is remarkable with the pitch blacks in Orlok’s castle countered by the dim and oppressive orange glow of a nearby fire, all while Orlok seems to slowly transport around the room. Candlelight, firelight, and moonlight are relied upon constantly in Nosferatu and in shrouding the characters in blackness, illuminating their face in this eerie glow, and leaving just enough room for Blaschke and Eggers to play with, especially as it comes to shadows. Silhouettes of Count Orlok are one of the film’s most striking images, from the opening scene in the curtain to a corridor as his hellhounds chase Thomas, Orlok presents a most terrifying profile. An aerial shot above Wisborg with the shadow of his hand cast over the entire town – as the legends in the towns say, those under his influence are under his shadow, and Eggers uses this idea as a visual motif – is impeccable, while his movements through the Hutter home are rendered even more unnerving by showing it exclusively through the shadow he casts on the walls. He is the darkness and Nosferatu this devilish aura to great effect.

Nosferatu is, first and foremost, a very solemn film. It is terrifying, but it emerges from a love story of great bloodshed and sorrow. Ellen was a young and lonely woman, one who would be described by Count Orlok as “not of human kind,” but she longed only for a companion and evil heeded that call, using her for its own misdeeds. Now, she is fully under its influence with Orlok having a supernatural hold upon her soul. Eggers, throughout, leans into portraying those under Orlok’s influence as essentially being possessed and Ellen is especially emblematic of this with Depp playing the role with echoes of The Exorcist or Possession. Her body levitates, convulses, and her eyes roll back, as Ellen is fully consumed by the power the evil has on her. It is a full-bodied performance – Depp is tremendous, her eyes a key tool for the film and her embodiment of the physical toll this has taken on her gives it great heart – and there is tragedy underneath the horror of watching her body contort. There is lightness in her, empowered by her passionate love of Thomas. She has the hope of living a life without the shadow of Count Orlok, but she is doomed. It is romantic and heartbreaking, as she she struggles to escape the influence of Orlok and to have the good love she always dreamed of having. To save those she loves, she must make the ultimate sacrifice and confront this evil she dreads alone and in full embrace.

In addition to Depp’s great performance, Nosferatu benefits from an entire cast full of standouts. Bill Skarsgård is, of course, essential to the film’s success. His Count Orlok is compared, by Ellen, to a “serpent” that has crawled into her body and Skarsgård’s delivery often has an almost slithering, guttural, and disembodied hiss to it that is immediately enthralling and horrifying. His lurching physicality further captures the oppressive feeling of dread that accompanies Orlok into every room. Willem Dafoe is perfect as this eccentric and rejected professor who has dedicated his life to the study of the occult and now has a perfect vessel to put it into practice. Dafoe delivers so many great lines – “I have seen things in this world that would’ve made Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb” is a favorite – and has such panache as a performer, captivating from his introduction and playing to the back row at every moment. He also has true kindness in his relationship with Ellen, believing her stories without needing to see it first-hand, and empowering her to do what she must to fight back. Ralph Ineson’s gruff and matter-of-fact delivery is perfect for his hardened and weary doctor. Nicholas Hoult continues his fantastic 2024 with another great performance. Close-ups on his terrified face in the castle and his nerve-jangling delivery are tremendous. He feels so genuinely scared that the audience is immediately brought into that feeling alongside him, all while eyes scan and dart about the castle trying to find what dangers await him around every corner. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has a somewhat quieter role, but one he plays with grace and that comes to epitomize the film’s tragic side. Simply opening his home to Ellen, he and his family will be right in the path of Count Orlok’s bloody rampage. A scene of Taylor-Johnson’s Friedrich on the bedroom floor of his two daughters, holding them tight, is later countered with a far more somber sight. Him and his wife locked in their final embrace speaks to the film’s overarching portrayal of the magnetic and supernatural longing between lovers, once more expressed between realms and portrayed so beautifully. It is quiet and humanistic, a pained expression of the grief and agony that Orlok leaves in his wake.

Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu is an unnerving, horrifying, and eerie gothic horror. He is a master of mood and atmosphere, cultivating it from the very first shots and bolstering it with the film’s strong production design and cinematography to bring to life the very real threat posed by vampires in this world. The film rarely rises above this level of unnerving, only outwardly scary or relying on jump scares on a few occasions. Instead, it is a slow-paced and suffocating rendition of the folklore, allowing this feeling of dread and eventually abject horror to bleed into every frame. It is a familiar story, one that develops and resolves as one would expect if they have seen other films based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. However, it is in Eggers’ artful, stylish, and impressive direction that Nosferatu rises above the competition to stand as a truly exceptional horror film. It is an experience sure to linger in nightmares for long to come.