OSCARS 2025: Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers certainly has an instantly recognizable style. His fascination with folklore, historical details, tendency to cook multiple themes into his work, and a droll sense of humor has made him among the most easily imitated of the modern wave of horror directors. Having such a distinct approach has also made him divisive, some finding his commitment to historical accuracy dorky or inauthentic somehow. From most accounts, the guy has always been like this. As a boy, he was such an obsessive fan of F.W. Murnau's “Nosferatu” that he adapted it as a school play. In other words, making a new “Nosferatu” movie has been a lifelong ambition of his. We've heard rumors of such a project for years, Anya Taylor-Joy or Harry Styles being attached at various points. After being in and out of development for a long time, Eggers' vision of “Nosferatu” finally solidified into an actual movie. The public's appetite for classic monsters and gothic horror seems to unpredictably come and go. However, the new “Nosferatu” would become a surprise box office success last December, spawning internet memes along the way, and re-introducing a new generation to this story. Now, despite being part of the genre rarely acknowledged by the Academy, it's nominated for four Oscars. 

Eggers' remake does not stray far from Murnau's film nor the Bram Stoker novel that proceeded it. The classic narrative is maintained: Thomas Hutter is a real estate agent in Wisburg, Germany, circa 1838, recently married to a troubled young woman named Ellen. He receives an assignment to travel to an obscure castle within the Carpathian mountains, in order to finalize a purchase of a derelict property in Wisburg. The buyer is Count Orlok and he is, obviously, a vampire. He imprisons Thomas and travels, via boat, to Germany, bringing the plague with him. A sickly Hutter, having survived and made the journey back home, teams up with the owner of a near-by insane asylum and a professor of the occult to save his wife from the thrall of this vampiric count. What Eggers adds is a new subplot about Ellen, haunted by otherworldly visions her whole life, having a prior history with the vampire... Which the undead count hopes to rekindle, whether she likes it or not. 

The Academy has nominated Eggers' “Nosferatu” for its cinematography, costumes, production design, and make-up. This speaks to the exactness the director and his team bring to the film in fulfilling a very specific image. “Nosferatu” is a gorgeous shadow show. The historical details in the costumes and sets are clearly meant to capture as accurate a version of Germany in the middle 1800s. This is paired with a highly stylized visual approach, the film rich with darkness and shadows. The film swings between naturalistic lighting in interiors that range from cozy to forebodingly sterile to sternly controlled expressionistic swings. The latter invokes a dream-like ambiance, visible in moments where Hutter, in all but a dream state, seems to float into a carriage. Multiple times throughout the film, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke – Eggers' go-to D.P. since “The Witch” – often employs an observing, smoothly moving approach. As if we, the audience, are also floating just outside the film and watching these events play out. It's all so perfectly arranged, the remake successfully unfolding like a gothic dreamscape. 

“Nosferatu” doesn't employ this style simply because it looks cool and successfully updates the classic horror visuals for the modern age. (Though it does do both of those things.) Bram Stoker's novel is a story of Victorian suppression, of polite and pure English maidens being at the mercy of a distinctively foreign monster. Count Dracula's attacks on Mina and Lucy invoke episodes of sleep paralysis, of a phantasmic incubus appearing at the girl's bedside to enforce his appetite on them. Or, worst yet for the morals of the day, awaken lust within them. How much of this was intentional on Stoker and how much was simply invoking folkloric traditions is hotly debated to this day. Whatever the case, Eggers' “Nosferatu” makes this the central thesis of the story. From the very first scene, Ellen is entuned with otherworldly forces. She invites in a comforting spirit, to bring her peace from the things she sees and feels and dreams about. Instead, she gets Count Orlok, a monster who physically uses her body. The Victorians, and presumably their German equivalents, insisted on keeping their lower needs in the shadows, pushing them into the subconscious. Our animal sexual urges are older than the spoken word, inevitably linked to ancient and pre-Christian beliefs. This means that lustful desires, the dreams and nightmares our sleeping mind weaves, and the occult are all one and the same. It's far from a new observation but it is a powerful one.

That's hard for Ellen, who wants to be a proper lady. She discusses her father finding her, naked in the woods, and accusing her of being "sinful." She's been shamed her whole life for the connection she has with the spiritual world. Throughout the film, she flies into hypnotic states, often gyrating wildly, spreading her legs, and lasciviously rolling her tongues around as if in orgasmic throes. Professor von Franz, the Van Helsing stand-in, accurately identifies these episodes as oracle-like states of higher being. (Both Ellen and von Franz are associated with cats, showing their feline-like intuitive links to the occultic realm.) This frightens Ellen, who has been told to suppress her otherworldly abilities as she suppresses her natural sexual desires. As she suppresses the latent queerness that is implied to be shared with Anna, the Lucy parallel. Presumably the same undercurrent of queerness that leads the Count to feed on Hutter, his body pumping and trembling as he does. It is also her power. Eggers' “Nosferatu” centers the Mina stand-in as the story's heroine, who ultimately destroys the vampire by embracing the tendencies she's been told to deny her entire life.

Many adaptations of the “Dracula” story play up the Count's connection to an unleashed libido by, simply put, making him hot. He seduces the maidens into his arms and they often get into it quickly enough, if they don't outright desire him to begin with. Eggers does everything it can to make Count Orlok a grotesque horror. (Which hasn't stopped the monster fuckers of the internet from lusting after him.) He also resists the commonly employed tactic of making the Harkers'/Hutters' marriage a sexless one, in order to make the vampire into the more attractive option. Thomas loves Ellen. He desires her. The two kiss passionately throughout and he goes through Hell to be with her again. When she is at her most desperate moment, writhing in a mad state, he loves her still. That is very honorable. However, Thomas Hutter is still a man. He is still of the world of man. Ellen hates Orlok. She wants to be with her husband. However, unavoidably, there is something about her that only the vampire can understand. “Nosferatu” is not a love story, at least not between the heroine and the monster. That doesn't stop its bloodsucker from having a certain irresistible allure. 

This speaks to another element of the film. Throughout the story, its male heroes employ logic as often as they can. Dr. Sievers is a man of science, who is reluctant to embrace the supernatural explanation. Harding, Hutter's friend and Anna's husband, eventually has his patience stretched pass the breaking point and dismisses any announcement of the paranormal. This stands in contrast to Ellen, with her somnambulant fits of mania, and Anna, who is at least willing to entertain the possibility of the otherworldly. Even their daughters identify a “monster” in their bedroom, which Harding sets out to slay. The men of this story want to impose the walls and barriers of their city on the natural world, shown beautifully in the contrast between the boxed-in visuals of Wisburg and the wide vistas of the Carpathians. What method has been more effective in taming the wild, the subconscious, than the forces of capitalism? The need to provide for his wife, to be a good worker, is what ultimately sees Hutter signing over Ellen to Orlok, like Judas trading Christ for silver. He instinctively feels it is wrong but does it anyway, to serve the order he has been told is the proper path. Women remain more in-tune with their emotional states while men are told to deny all emotional needs and strictly be practical. That's another reason why all the guys in the film are powerless to stop the ancient threat of Orlok, something only a woman can do.

Eggers' “The Witch” more-or-less kicked off the modern folk horror revival. This obviously means that his “Nosferatu” draws a lot more from classical Slavic legends about vampires than Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. Count Orlok, as presented here, is a festering corpse. His sickly pale body is covered with tumorous growths and bony protrusions. His mere presence seems to feel wrong to everyone around him, Hutter being visibly disturbed simply by being in the same room with the Count. His easily imitated method of speech – truly, the Bane voice of 2024 – includes a constant wheezing rasp. Orlok is death incarnate. He controls the storms, manipulates the shadows, and brings with him the plague. The film is doing everything it can to dispel the modern notion of the sexy, romantic vampire. This Dracula is a deformed, hideous monster who himself denies an ability to feel love. Human emotions is beyond him and it's hard to imagine that he was ever human. Eggers has put a strictly folkloric vampire on the screen, including showing us Romani rituals for dealing with the undead. 

Bill Skarsgård, buried under mounds of make-up and adapting a wild accent, is unrecognizable as the vampiric count. This Dracula does not go to the theatre or don evening wear. He has a bushy mustache, accurate to the source material, and wears rigorously researched Hungarian attire.  He seemingly can only occupy the shadowy netherworlds of nightmares. At the same time, there is something tragic about him. When we do see Skarsgård's eyes, like Max Schreck's before him, they are wide and glaring... And sad too. Orlok is as drawn towards Ellen as she is to him. His methods are vile, eating babies and insisting spiritual contracts be fulfilled. However, as he dies to the morning crow of the cock, his story feels a bit inevitable too. The inhuman hunger that is his entire reason for being ultimately destroys him, like so many have been destroyed by their need for sex, companionship, and to have a desire fulfilled. 

As much as has been written about Eggers' commitment to period accuracy, his “Nosferatu” is undeniably a work of expressionism too. The performances are theatrical and high-strung. Lily-Rose Depp writhes wildly throughout the film, reminding us more than once of Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” Willem Dafoe barks the script's most baroque dialogue, screaming towards the rafters in utter delightful fashion. Nicholas Hoult spends the entire movie bathed in flop sweat while Simon McBurney, as the Renfield stand-in Herr Knock, gloriously hams it up as a raving lunatic. This exaggerated style unavoidably bends towards humor at times. Ralph Ineson as Dr. Sievers is repeatedly a source of dry comedy, responding with understated horror to what he witnesses. The full-born sexuality of the vampire's invasion results in some snickering chuckles, strictly from the contrast between the stately setting and what is being done and said. Lots of people are coming in lots of different ways. I don't know how any one can accuse “Nosferatu” of being stuffy or lifeless, when it's overflowing with red-blooded theatricality in its acting. That adds a suitably bigger-than-life feeling to the film, matching its dream-like visuals and the Revelations-esque atmosphere to the scenes of Wisburg being consumed by the plague.

The story of “Dracula” has been told a hundred times before and will be told a hundred times again. This isn't Hoult or Dafoe's first brush with the material. It's not even the only “Nosferatu” movie that came out last year. However, when I re-read the book not that long ago, the movie I saw in my head was startlingly similar to Eggers' “Nosferatu.” While the remake has as many vocal deniers as Eggers' other work, I was obviously always going to love this. Motion pictures like this are what made me fall in love with the medium. It's nifty that the Academy noticed its artistry and I'm happy that the zoomers liked it too. It's a gloriously gothic retelling, as fascinating and intense as Herzog and Murnau's takes before it. Dracula and all his disciples will live forever, this film being proof once again that the story can always be reinvented and reinterpreted in exciting ways. [9/10]