By Edward Bayliss
Since he was nine years old, Robert Eggers says he has been ‘obsessed’ with W.F. Murnau’s 1922 vampire horror, Nosferatu. In his years long process of writing the screenplay, one can imagine his rubber wearing faster than his lead. He arrives now on Christmas day, 2024, at one incredibly well researched and well loved iteration of Bram Stoker’s original. This title bears all the familiar Eggers-hallmarks of the folkloric, the gothic, the supernatural, and Willem Dafoe as our wild eyed occultist. The film looks exceptional – its creation of a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness is remarkable, and due credit is owed to DP Darin Blaschke. To use Mark Kermode’s favoured phrase (now especially apt), it’s heart is in the right place – a sentiment with which I think only very few would contend. All this, but my praise comes caveated. Though Eggers’ world creation is ever imposing, there isn’t much in the way of sharp arrest, or sudden stabs to our side. Let it be said, I am not a lover of movies made just of ‘moments’. I do however want to feel the instant chill of putting on cold clothes in the morning, but instead I somehow only get the constant sensation of a loose shoe-lace.
The story of Nosferatu remains almost unchanged from the Murnau original, save some added sexual ornamentation. This is one aspect of reinvention. The traditionally white fanged, bulbous headed vampires with high collared cloaks won’t run. Neither also will their simple object of blood. Instead, Nosferatu here has bloody and bodily lusts, as well as a period accurate Transylvanian outfit.
Bill Skarsgård, originally pitted to play solicitor and husband figure Thomas Hutter, firmly hits the mark as Count Orlok. The original film, being silent, leaves Eggers with a playground of sound to explore. Skarsgård’s voice vibrates with a delicious bass, his training from opera singer Júníusdóttir becoming very apparent as he masters the tones and textures of the undead Romanian aristocrat. The heft of Orlok’s 1590s era authentic cloak plays brilliantly against Lily Rose Depp’s (Ellen) diaphanous night gowns and floral fabrics. Costume designer and longtime Eggers collaborator Linda Muir leaves us very impressed.
The tagline for Eggers’ film reads: ‘succumb to the darkness’. In a film so submerged in shadow, with only a lick of flame or shard of moonlight to illuminate our characters, we can’t help but surrender to the darkness. Pulling at the coattails of Kubrick, Eggers uses as much natural lighting as possible, avoiding VFX at all costs. The quality of the picture is outstanding. Some sequences are slowly unsettling; it feels almost as though it is midnight at midday at Orlok’s castle, recalling some of Magritte’s disorientating works. At the Roma village below, the air is thick with flamelight which sits heavily on smoke, affording a stuffy and full feel to the shot. To set this supernatural fable against such an urgently realist backdrop is a great achievement. Gypsy rites, accents, costumes, and interiors of the period have clearly all been studied meticulously – Eggers uses academic articles to supplement his vision, as well as past productions.
The original Nosferatu plot of 1922 is relatively bare, leaving Eggers opportunity to add some flesh to the bones of the action. We have added intrigue to Lily Rose Depp’s character as she goes more through the catharsis of the sacrificial ‘saviour’ figure. While her writhing and body contortions are striking and seem convincing without the support of special effects, they are too frequent and so dilute their initial shock. Eggers should have exploited the sexual weirdness between the triangle of Orlok, Ellen, and Hutter to a greater degree, this being the location of great narrative potential. Similarly to Ellen’s fits, the menacing silhouette of Orlok is brilliantly conceived at first behind a shifting curtain in the fictional German town of Wisborg, but the motif is repeated too often afterwards. I was never terrified during the screening of Nosferatu, though I didn’t find the appearance of Orlok amusing as critic Peter Bradshaw did. I think he has infantilised the great research and ingenuity of Eggers in his creation of the done-to-death Dracula character.
The camera work is first rate. We skim over seas and mountains, devil-set crossroads and cold stone corridors. The lens is at its best when we follow Hutter on his journey to Transylvania, producing some truly arresting wide angle shots. It feels often like miniature sets are used in tilt shift, especially when we see Orlok’s shadow (again) cast over the roof tiles and spires of Wisborg, adding a kind of fantastical unreality to the image. Eggers had custom lenses fitted to create the Murnau inspired blue tint to much of the picture – one of the main aspects of homage that doesn’t go missed.
This isn’t Eggers’ best work, contrary to what Roger Ebert critic Zoller Seitz would have you think. It lacks the penetration and sheer terror of The Witch, and falls short of the crippling bizarreness of The Lighthouse, but it certainly isn’t half hearted. It doesn’t bite us with the intensity we might want, but certainly it gnaws at our heels with the tenacity and investment of a director who knows his craft.