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Go behind the scenes of Nosferatu with director Robert Eggers
Featurette: Focus Features

Nosferatu (2024)
Directed by Robert Eggers
Rated R
Bitten 25 December 2024
#Nosferatu

This latest version of the classic Dracula tale is a definitive, modern take.

Plague Ship

It’s plainly evident writer/director Robert Eggers is having fun giving people the willies in Nosferatu. The theatricality of the experience and the playfulness of the filmmaking offer plenty to savor, and it’s in keeping with the storied cinematic history of Nosferatu.

There’s F.W. Murnau’s 1922 original silent film starring Max Schreck (trivia: Chistopher Walken’s character in Batman Returns was named in honor of the actor). More than a century later, it’s still regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made and that early adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula story is a staple of film studies.

In 1979, Werner Herzog, a director with a singular cinematic vision all his own, remade the tale with Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani.

But, ultimately, both now show the creakiness and fragility of time, like a vampire exposed to too much light.

Dark Shadows

Herzog’s version boasted on-location ambitions, but it was a deeply somber movie with an equally somber musical score. It relied heavily on Kinski’s performance and a twisted (in its own right) take on Count Orlock that cast him as a borderline sympathetic villain whose pain was caused by a lack of love in his pasty-white-skinned, blood-starved life.

In many respects, Eggers has accounted for those primarily film age-related deficiencies, brought them up to modern filmmaking capabilities and enhanced them with modern storytelling sensibilities that are certainly bolder and more intense.

Fittingly, Eggers shot in full color (with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio) but the frigid, wintry Eastern European on-location landscapes and the gloomy, oppressive castle and cityscapes look black-and-white. What seems defiantly shot in black-and-white smoothly bleeds into color as the lighting changes, the landscape becoming more colorful. This playfulness with light and shadow is so evocative and represents the very essence of filmmaking itself that makes a lasting impression.

But Eggers, following up on his Viking tale, The Northman, seems to strain with the big ambitions his latest efforts represent. His Lighthouse was a triumph of a focused, arthouse experience, while Northman stuck too much with the familiar instead of veering into the potential of new terrain. In that regard, Nosferatu comes as something of a course correction; Eggers advances the vampire story further instead of holding back. Maybe part of the challenge, then, is in appreciating Eggers’ approach of making a period piece movie (set in 1838) featuring olde school English dialogue. It’s something of a clash of sensibilities with the modern filmmaking on view.

Escape the Shadow

Nosferatu is in essence the tale of Count Dracula, but particularly with Eggers’ version, there’s a sweeping intensity and a sharp, straight-on approach to the climax that is unsettling. It’s certainly the most intense telling of the Dracula story, a gruesome vision that shuns the color and opulence of Francis Ford Coppola’s take in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Eggers gets great support from his cast, particularly Bill Skarsgard, who trades in the clown makeup of Pennywise in the It movies and transforms into Count Orlok, the vampire at the heart of Nosferatu. Lily-Rose Depp (The King) is terrific as Ellen Hutter, the object of Count Orlok’s obsession and the two bring the movie to a tragic conclusion with an enexpected amount of emotional impact. After all, these are age-old characters finding new passion and power in modern cinema.

And there’s the return of an Eggers favorite, Willem Dafoe (The Northman), as Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz. Albin delivers one of the year’s most memorable lines: "I have seen things that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!"

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.