“Does evil come from within us, or from beyond?”
Challenging and horrifying, atmospheric and haunting, beautiful and grotesque –Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu is a stunning homage to the long history of Dracula-inspired vampire films, particularly F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent German Expressionist classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and also Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre as well as Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This remarkable arthouse horror film blends a surreal dreamlike demonic world of vampires with the emerging civilized world of modern science while the occult is brought out of the shadows and confronts the light of day.
The setting is 1838 in the fictional town of Visburg, Germany (as imagined in Murnau’s original Nosferatu). The film centers on a troubled young woman named Ellen (brilliantly performed by Lily-Rose Depp). She is a somnambulistic sleepwalker who has been diagnosed with “melancholy” and loneliness, perhaps what we might call depression and anxiety. It is implied that her dark mental state has emerged in response to her own repressed sexuality (a subtle but critical point in the film). In one of her apparent fits of “hysteria,” she reaches out to spirits in the darkness and, in response, she somewhat accidentally awakens a horrifying, nightmarish presence that leads to a psychologically possessive, and even quasi-sexual, relationship with an age-old vampire. As years go by, she tries to forget her mental problems and she gets married to a kindly young man named Thomas Hutter (wonderfully played by Nicholas Hoult, based on Bram Stoker’s original character Jonathan Harker in the novel). Hutter is struggling with financial debts so he takes a job at a local real estate agency, the Knock brokerage, where he is eager to make partner. Accordingly, he is dispatched to visit a remote Count living in the Carpathian Mountains who wishes to purchase a new home in Visburg.
Despite Ellen’s fervent protestations, Thomas leaves on this ominous trip anyway. He travels on horseback, through snowy forests and dim, darkly lit villages –it includes a brief stop in a community of Roma gypsies who undergo a strange ritual whereby they bring forth a naked young virgin seemingly in order to awaken a sleeping vampire and kill it with a stake. As Thomas watches from behind the trees, the vampire is stabbed and immediately projectile vomits out of his grave. Moments later, he awakens in his bed with mud caked onto his shoes, implying that he actually was out in the wilderness. Or was this all just a nightmare? He steps outside to find that the gypsy community has completely vanished in yet another disturbing sign of things to come.
With his horse now gone, Thomas travels on foot and scurries along a narrow, snowy, forested path when a driverless carriage suddenly approaches and beckons him inside (this is just one of many gorgeously shot sequences in the film). The carriage, trailed by a trio of salivating dogs, transports him up to a vast, looming, hilltop castle where Count Orlock resides (Count Orlock is memorably played by Bill Skarsgård –though Skarsgård is entirely unrecognizable in this film, and he is wholly distinct from Max Schreck’s portrayal in the 1922 film). While only featured in blurry sequences at the start of the film, Count Orlock speaks to us with a booming, echoing baritone voice which heavily rolls the “R” sound. His breath lingers for long, uncomfortable periods, with a wheezing, groaning, asthmatic sound. He appears to be a very old European Count with a small mustache and piercing eyes. After Count Orlock and Thomas Hutter conduct their business, Thomas quickly grows petrified as Orlock brings him closer into a dreamlike state and beckons him to sit beside a huge fireplace. Thomas awakens in the morning on the floor with teeth marks on his chest and Count Orlock nowhere to be found. This happens again the following day as Thomas is compelled to sign a document written in Orlock’s native language (presumably connected to the real estate deal) and again Thomas awakens with more teeth marks on his body.
Shortly thereafter, Thomas attempts to flee from Orlock’s castle, but he cannot escape and he accidentally stumbles upon a crypt buried deep underground. Here, he slowly opens a casket covered in apparent pentagram symbols to find Orlock sleeping amidst a great many rats. In utter horror, Thomas lifts a nearby pick axe and attempts to kill Orlock, but the Count suddenly awakens and attacks Thomas again. As an aside, this film is unafraid to confront its audience with horrendous, unbearable scenes of Orlock sucking on the chest (rather than the neck) of his victims, particularly close to the heart –there are also scenes of implied necrophilia in this film (be forewarned).
An unknown amount of time passes before Thomas manages to escape this nightmarish castle by leaping out his bedroom window into a rushing river below which carries him away –however, he cannot fully escape because he has now been cursed by the “shadow” of Count Orlock, who is revealed to be a demonic, vampiric Nosferatu. Meanwhile back in Visburg, Ellen continues to descend into nightly terrors as she remains at the home of friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin). A medical doctor is then summoned, Dr. Sievers (played by Ralph Ineson), to examine Ellen. Here, are we treated to scenes of levity as Dr. Sievers is lightly satirized for calmly brushing aside her “condition” and gently anesthetizing her. Modern science is shown to be incapable of addressing moral quandaries of this sort, particularly with respect to the problem of good and evil. Indeed, theodicy remains an ever-present concern for Ellen throughout the film –“does evil come from within us, or from beyond?”
At any rate, the whole film becomes saturated with dread as the terrifying Nosferatu boards a boat (which quickly becomes a “plague boat”) and descends upon Visberg. Thomas’s employer, Herr Knock (Sion McBurney), begins eating live animals and harvesting their blood before he is imprisoned in a dingy prison cell –he is shown to be a possessed acolyte of Count Orlock. And a knock-off Van Helsing character is introduced; he is a quirky, eccentric student of both alchemy and the occult named Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (wonderfully played by Willem Dafoe). He is a critically important character who first discovers the truth about the Nosferatu, despite many people around him who are living in denial.
When Count Orlock descends upon Visberg, he unleashes a rat-fueled plague which kills scores of German citizens, and at the same time, a fatigued Thomas (who has since been revived by Orthodox nuns) manages to make his way back to Visberg, though he is nearly half-dead. Count Orlock comes to Ellen in the night and announces that she must willingly give herself over to him in order to complete their transformation. When she refuses, he gives her three days to decide. Each day he attacks someone new. Oddly enough, Professor Von Franz and the rest of the group seem to waste the daylight on each of these three days. Instead of traveling to the Count’s new dilapidated home in Visberg, where they might kill him, they seem to fritter their time awaiting his next killing. Why is this the case? Ultimately, the responsibility is left to Ellen who invites Count Orlock into her bedroom on the third day where he feasts upon her blood and sleeps with her until the sun rises. At long last, the light of day finally kills this fearsome Nosferatu. The closing image of the film reveals a hideous corpse of the naked Nosferatu lying atop Ellen, with his bony, skeletal legs spread apart and his dangling, rotten flesh hanging off his body. It is an abrupt but satisfying end to this terrifying menace. In order to overcome her dark, chaotic mental health challenges and Victorian repression (i.e. melancholia and hysteria), Ellen was required to submit herself to this manifestation of desire, obsession, and appetite –the dreaded Nosferatu.
“We must know evil to be able to destroy it. We must discover it within ourselves and when we have, we must crucify the evil within ourselves or there is no salvation.” –Professor Von Franz
Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu offers a hopeful horror movie which avoids some of the arguably regressive tropes of the past, even if it is essentially a redress of the exact same story as the 1922 silent classic. Here, the essential problem of the Nosferatu becomes an internal conflict within Ellen. While it features some familiar staples of the vampire genre –blood-sucking and night-walking—it also turns other vampiric tropes on their head. For example, throughout the film, we are left wondering when and if Thomas will drive a wooden stake through the heart of Count Orlock, and also if Orlock will convert and awaken other fellow vampires to join him. But neither of these situations ever come to fruition (though Professor Von Franz does sprinkle garlic cloves around the Nosferatu carcass at the end). This version of the story features a decidedly more explicitly sexualized vampire than other films in the same vein. Indeed, at one point Count Orlock professes to be nothing more than a manifestation of “appetite,” or obsession. He is singularly consumed with possessing Ellen. Perhaps in some ways he might be best understood to reflect the deeply inhuman result of Victorian-era repression. While Ellen is continually gaslit by her contemporaries, she is forced to bury her troubles deeper within herself, until they are eventually born out, one way or another. The only cure for her repressed sexuality is to submit herself to desire, her own terror. As with the original Nosferatu, Orlock is more a bestial, demonic figure, unlike the sophisticated, Victorian aristocrat as featured in Bram Stoker’s novel (and memorably portrayed by Bela Lugosi in the classic Dracula film).
Notably, critics have often found xenophobic undertones to F.W. Murnau’s original film, as well, with Count Orlock representing the dreaded “other” in German society –the Jewish immigrant menace who carries with him rats and a plague while lurking in the darkness, preying on noble ladies. In the 1920s, portraying a recently defeated Germany in chaos without a competent leader, at the behest of mystical occultist foreigners, the 1922 classic film has sometimes been interpreted as a defense of the forthcoming right-wing ethno-nationalist movement under Hitler (though I would never argue this was Murnau’s true intent). But in Eggers’s interpretation, Count Orlock is hardly ‘otherized.’ In fact, he bears a big bushy mustache and a large fur coat, almost as if to put him squarely at home in Germany (in many ways, he bears striking resemblance to Kaiser Wilhelm II). One might speculate that in doing so, Eggers is commenting on the nature of true villainy. In our own age, for example, Eggers sheds light on the problems within our current culture, the fearsome “elites” who are causing problems rather than the immigrants –in this way, Nosferatu comes to resemble the now-familiar clutch of cynical billionaires whose obsessions are brazen (many of whom literally absorb youthful blood platelets like vampires) as they are gleefully taking over the United States and other countries around the world, while whatever remains of the dream of self-governance gives way to the crudest form of oligarchic masquerade. It is also worth noting that, as with the original 1922 Nosferatu, Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu in 2024 is being released a mere four years after a deadly pandemic (COVID-19). With plagues serving as the historical backdrop to both films, the parallels are striking.
At any rate, Robert Eggers’s love for Nosferatu is made manifestly apparent throughout this extraordinary production (in interviews, Eggers’s has stated that he once produced a theatrical adaptation of Nosferatu in high school). From simply staggering cinematography and excellent performances, to an eerie score and well-researched historical sets, rife with folkloric history, shadow-play, and dialogue –this is assuredly a powerful film. However, gradually throughout the film, as Count Orlock’s visage had come more into view, I found myself struggling to take him seriously. His disembodied voice was haunting at first, but his physical appearance became somewhat lackluster. I suppose I was a bit disappointed and underwhelmed by this interpretation of the character. Also, Nosferatu features many conventional jump scares which are all-too common in today’s horror movies, and many of the scenes featuring a character convulsing in possession actually left me chuckling rather than fearful. One of the great defects of this film is that it is heavy in tone, but light in substance. It teeters on the edge of self-parody at points in that it doesn’t really introduce many new ideas to the vampire genre (for example, the theme of repressed female sexuality and self-control has been tirelessly employed again and again). It remains a remake rather than a reimagining. Perhaps it is my own failing for believing this film would be anything more than a remake. After all, an artist has no obligation to create something new each time. But still, it would have been intriguing to explore the Nosferatu in greater detail. Who is this Nosferatu? What do we know about him? How did he become a Nosferatu? Very little is explained unfortunately. Eggers’s film serves as more of an homage rather than a critical engagement with the genre, and maybe that is enough. Admittedly, I was also a bit unclear about a few things in the film. Such as: why did Orlock choose Ellen in the first place? Or rather, why did he respond to Ellen’s cries in the darkness? And why in the world would he need to purchase real estate in order to draw closer to her? Aren’t his powers seemingly limitless? Couldn’t he simply beckon her to come to his castle instead? While this film does a remarkable job of avoiding some of the over-used tropes found elsewhere (such as the clichés satirized in Mel Brooks’s Dracula comedy which have been noted by Eggers himself), what exactly are the rules of this particular Nosferatu? How is he able to possess certain people? Why does he allow Thomas to remain alive wandering around his castle for several days? Why not kill him early on in the film after all the paperwork has been signed? And what exactly happens when someone has been bitten by this Nosferatu? Are they merely cursed? Why are some characters killed by the Nosferatu, while others are kept alive and terrorized by his great, evil shadow? I tend to grow a bit distant from a film when I don’t understand the rules at play.
Regardless of these quibbles, Nosferatu offers a remarkable cinematic experience. These days, I greatly appreciate the rare opportunity to witness an auteur like Robert Eggers as he takes big risks and makes uniquely crafted arthouse films. Having seen all of his prior films to date, I would say Nosferatu is not my favorite of his oeuvre, but as a lover of F.W. Murnau’s films, I will nevertheless celebrate this achievement all the same.
Credits:
- Director: Robert Eggers
- Screenplay by: Robert Eggers
- Based on: F.W. Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) and Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula
- Produced by: Jeff Robinov, John Graham, Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus, Robert Eggers
- Starring:
- Bill Skarsgård…..County Orlock
- Nicholas Hoult…..Thomas Hutter
- Lily-Rose Depp…..Ellen Hutter
- Aaron Taylor-Johnson…..Friedrich Harding
- Emma Corrin…..Anna Harding
- Willem Dafoe…..Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz
- Cinematography: Jarin Blaschke
- Edited by: Louise Ford
- Music by: Robin Carolan
- Production Companies: Maiden Voyage Pictures, Studio 8, Birch Hill Road Entertainment
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Click here to read my review of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).