In the liminal space between myths and truth, magic and science, lie all the things that go bump in the night, the things that exist to haunt us, to unnerve us, to compel us to question our reason despite evidence to the contrary. Like a nightmare in our waking life, which makes our blood run cold even in the light of day, the things we can’t explain become the very things that we search for in every shadow, every dark corner, in hopes that our fears don’t become reality. This is what courses through Robert Eggers’s latest project, an adaption of both the 1922 F. W. Murnau-directed film of the same name and Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the long-gestating Nosferatu, an adult fable built upon nightmares whose style entrances even when the narrative loses some of its glorious momentum.
Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen Hutter in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
1800s Germany: Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) doesn’t realize quite the precipice he’s on when he’s selected by his real estate firm to travel six days to the home of wealthy Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to conclude a business deal. Closing the deal promises success for the firm, but also the opportunity to provide the kind of lifestyle that Thomas believes his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) deserves. No matter how Ellen pleas with him to stay, Thomas ignores his wife’s supposed premonitions and goes, setting into motion a reunion years in the making that just may undo the world.
L-R: Nicholas Hoult stars as Thomas Hutter and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Friedrich Harding in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
Nosferatu is a wonderful phantasmagorical nightmare executed with sublime technical precision that is hampered by narrative slog as it approaches the third act. The former is the result of the concerted effort by director Eggers, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke (The Witch; The Lighthouse; The Northman), and the performers so that the audience rarely knows what’s real or what’s a dream. Even as Eggers repeatedly uses the same “person wakes startled in bed” transition, it never loses its efficacy due to the moment or scene before it. This could be the opening which finds Ellen in her bedroom, seeming floating across her floor as she approaches her balcony, the shadow of a figure appearing in portions of her billowing curtains before the scene transitions to a wide shot of a property upon which Ellen’s figure appears to be walking away from her home. This would be disquieting on its own as Depp’s physical performance imbues Ellen with the sensation that she’s moving separate from reality, but Eggers has opted to freeze the sky above the house so that the clouds hold in place as the house loams large in the background with Ellen appearing miniscule and vulnerable by comparison. By holding the clouds, the audience is given the sense of something unnaturally powerful at work, the position of Depp in the scene communicating both Ellen’s vulnerability and inability to take control of herself, amplifying the sensation of abnormality and terror. This is the push-pull technique that Eggers uses throughout the film so that we, the audience, and the character alike start to lose their grip on reality. Another striking moment being when Thomas manages to connect with a carriage that Orlok sends for him, the hooves of the horses slamming into the ground with such rhythmic unison so as to mimic a heartbeat. It’s both comforting and disquieting as we know it to be unnatural both in movement and sound, transcending the natural world to appear like a vessel toward Death rather than a mere conveyance to a meeting, its sensation amplified by the cinematography which blends darkness and light in order for the audience to see only as much as they need to but without absolute clarity, akin to a nightmare wherein details are obscured in our fear. That Thomas is then positioned within the scene as if he floats in only supports the notion that things are not as they appear — did he actually float, implying some kind of supernatural control, or is it just camera positioning which implies Hoult has an unnatural smoothness in his walk?
A carriage approaches Orlok’s castle in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
The sense of a waking nightmare permeates near every scene of the film; a sensation aided by the use of many extended shoots and long takes which seek to imbed the audience in the perspective of the characters. As more characters become unreliable due to their loosening grip on reality, so do the oners grow more effective and impressive via the marriage of digital effects and in-camera work. It’s clear in the aforementioned scene with Thomas that some digital magic is applied to enhance where the in-camera work needs assistance to create the necessary bone-chilling atmosphere, but, Eggers only does this as necessary, allowing the tangible elements to bring in awe, such as the masterful and hilarious sequence between Thomas and Orlok in the count’s chambers upon Thomas’s arrival in which the count seemingly moves from one end of the table to another in seconds. It’s all a matter of character position and camera placement and it works perfectly to increase Thomas’s already high dread given the last few days of travel. Add to this a figure that the audience mostly sees out of focus (Orlok) and even we begin to question whether we’re experiencing the same fever dream as Thomas and Ellen.
Nicholas Hoult stars as Thomas Hutter in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
Of course all of the above is further amplified by the film’s almost total desaturation of color. It’s not just Ellen’s pitch-black hair and white nightgown, but all the production design and costuming which are devoid of vibrancy, enhancing the coldness and cruelty of this world. The nightmare isn’t just where Orlok lives or where Ellen exists, their curious link being what pulls them together, and these characters through hell; it’s extended to the entire world which would be ordinarily drab in winter but not so much as to remove all the yuletide joy (this is film set at Christmas time, after all). Instead, only the darkest colors possess strength — the deep blues of the nautical sky hovering over the ship Demeter, the yellow of the hearth breaking through the darkness of Orlok’s chamber, and the inky black (so much of it) that spreads everywhere and grows surprisingly darker as Orlok approaches Ellen. The aesthetic can be viewed as a way to both honor the 1922 original and be the opposite of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 opulent Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but they’re far more purposeful than that, connecting with the narrative as an extension of Orlok’s immense evil and extensive reach. You may not know that you’re in his grasp, yet his power sucks all the vitality from the world nonetheless.
L-R: Ralph Ineson stars as Dr. Wilhelm Sievers, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Friedrich Harding, Emma Corrin as Anna Harding, and Willem Dafoe as Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz in director Robert Eggers NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release.. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
Everything presented is soaked in the real and imaginary, making so much of what we experience hypnagogic in the process. What we can confirm is the script’s insistence on adapting the source material as fully as possible, which is what brings us to the aforementioned latter. For this reviewer, it all begins with the appearance of the Demeter, the ship that carries Orlok across the sea, and the fate of the crew aboard. In the novel, this is treated as a series of captain’s logs which director André Øvredal turned into a feature film just last year. It’s not given a great deal of screentime in Nosferatu, yet, the momentum strangely grinds down upon reaching this moment and carrying out the sequences therein. We already know that Orlok is a threat. Eggers has seen to it by now that we’re meant to be terrified of him whether in his presence or not, and this entire portion doesn’t build upon that mythology at all; rather, it takes us away from Ellen, Thomas, and what’s set to befall them and their friends. There’s specific intent for Eggers to spend time here as it brings up a physical manifestation of the danger Orlok presents, but it often comes off as an unnecessary distraction for our characters to problem-solve which, in turn, releases the pressure of the horror in a way that makes one feel the time spent within the story rather than it coming off as a narrative reprieve. Similarly creating frustration is the manner in which the final confrontation goes down, which is explained via Willem Dafoe’s Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (an inclusion that’s meant to clear up an earlier moment which sets up a mystery requiring said explanation) but whose execution not only is done differently than the earlier mystery, but goes against the “ingredients” of said explanation. There’s a lot about Nosferatu that works getting by on vibes alone, but the ending is not one of them. It’s grotesque and beautiful, just like all the scenes before it, but quite dissatisfying in the way that it disobeys the rules of its own story.
L-R: Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen Hutter and Emma Corrin as Anna Harding in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC.
Much like David Lowry’s The Green Knight (2021) before it, Nosferatu is bound to become someone’s Christmas tradition. It’s not the same kind of morality play that Knight is, opting more for a terror-inducing rumination on the necessity of good to steel themselves against evil, but it’s perfect for the cold nights where the wind blows and your home makes all kinds of mysterious noises as it settles into the frigid dark. Even if not kept to the holidays, one can certainly devour Nosferatu over and again for its impressive technical and performance precision which truly convince the audience that not everything we see is real and, therefore, almost certainly places us into a lucid state of an inescapable nightmare. There are certainly reasons why it won’t work for everyone, but what does work is going to cement Eggers as a modern fable storyteller for the ages.
In theaters December 25th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Focus Features Nosferatu website.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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