To undertake the dreaded endeavor of conjuring Nosferatu anew, in the looming shadow of F.W. Murnau’s untouchable opus of 1922, is too tall a task. But in the masterful hands of the mind that summoned forth The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman, this reimagined gothic fever dream is sumptuous, suffocating and magnificently macabre.
From the first flicker of sepulchral light, Eggers plunges us into a damp, desaturated Wisborg, teetering on the brink of pestilence and mania. It’s here that Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen, pale as the moon and trembling with foreboding, anchors the narrative. Her guileless real estate agent of a husband, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), embarks on a fateful journey to Transylvania to finalise a deal with Bill Skarsgard’s awaited Count Orlok.
Borrowing liberally from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Murnau’s illicit adaptation, the film is a danse macabre, punctuated by feverish visions and grim inevitability. Not too bothered with fidelity to his source material, Eggers brings his signature genre sensibilities to the century-old tale: oppressive atmosphere, primal mysticism, and a smear of the grotesque.
The horror auteur’s world-building is intoxicating. The streets of Wisborg are menacingly cobbled, their gutters soon teeming with disease-bearing rodents. Orlok’s castle, a decrepit labyrinth of shadows, feels alive, its walls almost quivering with an ancient malevolence. Eggers borrows the desaturation of Murnau’s Expressionist palette but injects it with his own brand of dread — a visual language that speaks of decay, entropy, and the inexorable pull of death.
Skarsgard’s Orlok is a revelation. Good luck picturing the smouldering allure of Edward Cullen after this; this creature is a nightmare in the flesh, a cadaverous spectre with gnarled fingers and a leer that curdles blood. Yet beneath the grotesquerie lies something unsettlingly human — a yearning that renders him pitiable, as repulsive as he may be.
A still from ‘Nosferatu’
| Photo Credit:
Focus Features
Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen is clearly the film’s beating heart. Trading in her creepy crooner at HBO’s The Idol, for a new blood-sucking tormentor; Depp’s performance is at once tremulous and defiant, a portrait of a woman on the edge of self-destruction and transcendence. Her interactions with Orlok pulse with an almost sacrilegious electricity, the kind that makes you want to avert your gaze yet keeps you transfixed.
If the devil is in the details, then Jim Blaschke’s cinematography is pure, unholy communion. Blaschke’s palette is a study in decay: milky whites that curdle under jaundiced moonlight, blacks that bleed into the edges of the screen like creeping mold. The camera moves with the weight of dread, unhurried and deliberate, making even the stillness hum with menace. Orlok’s silhouettes stretch impossibly long across crumbling walls as if the architecture itself recoils from his touch. He invokes ghosts of German Expressionism to embalm scenes in exquisite light, preserving every ghastly detail for us to marvel at and recoil from. It’s séance work really.
A still from ‘Nosferatu’
| Photo Credit:
Focus Features
Still, Nosferatu does stumble under the weight of its ambitions. The pacing is deliberate to the point of lethargy and may prove an unexpected test of endurance. Eggers’ fascination with period accuracy also slightly veers into fetishistic excess. The dialogue is a verbose blend of Hammer Horror English and his trademark 19th-century formalities, but occasionally drowns the supporting performances in archaic melodrama. While Eggers does his best to juggle his cinematic influences from Murnau to Herzog to Coppola, the film often also feels at odds with itself.
And a particularly persistent strain of internet brainrot, unfortunately, had its way with me — every time the camera lingered on Orlok’s hideous mug, I couldn’t help but think of Jim Carrey’s over-the-top Dr. Robotnik from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
The real triumph of Nosferatu lies in how it lays bare the uneasiness of carnal morality. Eggers forces us to confront our complicity in Orlok’s temptation. As Ellen falters under the vampire’s moustachioed thrall, we too find ourselves sliding into her spiral of longing and loathing that’s disconcerting, but oddly irresistible. It’s this queasy acknowledgement of desires lurking within that far surpasses the cheap base fears of pedestrian horror fare.
Eggers’ Nosferatu is a film that demands surrender. Not everyone will have the patience for its brooding pace or baroque excesses, but for those willing to give up your body, mind and soul for the Count to sup on, it’s a haunting you won’t soon forget.
Nosferatu is currently running in theatres
Published – January 10, 2025 05:42 pm IST
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