In the annals of horror cinema, few names evoke as much primordial terror as Nosferatu. The gaunt, ghoulish visage of the vampire Count Orlok, portrayed by the aptly-named Max Schreck in F.W. Murnau’s groundbreaking 1922 silent film, has haunted the nightmares of generations. Now, over a century later, visionary director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) has resurrected this icon of fear for a new era in his extraordinary remake, simply titled Nosferatu.
Eggers, known for his obsessively detailed period pieces steeped in folklore and madness, proves the perfect choice to reimagine Murnau’s expressionist milestone. His Nosferatu is a fever dream of Gothic dread, with every frame dripping in eerie, candlelit atmosphere. The world Eggers conjures consumes you—you can practically feel the damp stone walls of Castle Orlok under your fingertips and taste the rot and decay on your tongue.
A Haunting Resurrection
While Eggers’s film is reverential to Murnau’s classic, it charts its own twisted path. We follow Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), an ambitious young real estate agent in 1830s Germany dispatched by his unsettling boss Herr Knock (a terrifically unhinged Simon McBurney) to the remote Carpathian mountains. His mission: to secure the sale of an abandoned property to the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård).
However, it is Hutter’s new bride Ellen (a revelatory Lily-Rose Depp) who emerges as the story’s tortured soul. Plagued by prophetic nightmares and wasting sickness, Ellen forms a psychic bond with Orlok, becoming both hunter and prey in a deadly game of obsession.
The Stuff of Nightmares
In Eggers’s hands, vampire lore becomes the stuff of primal, Freudian horrors. Skarsgård’s Orlok is a grotesque, Lovecraftian abomination—a manifestation of repressed desires and ancient, atavistic hunger. With sunken eyes, elongated fingers, and ears like bat wings, Skarsgård disappears into the role, becoming a creature of pure, malevolent id.
However, it is Depp who proves Eggers’s most potent weapon. Her performance is nothing short of astonishing—a bone-deep portrait of a woman unraveling, torn between Victorian propriety and feral, self-destructive desire. In Ellen’s pale, haunted eyes and trembling body, Depp locates both eros and thanatos. The tense interplay between predator and prey, corruption and innocence, ignites the screen.
The score is a chilling howl of despair that sounds like a string section plummeting down a mineshaft.
Exquisite Dread
Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke (The Lighthouse) craft a visual and aural symphony of exquisite dread. Every chiaroscuro frame could be an Edward Gorey illustration—a play of inky blacks, moonlit whites, and feverish splashes of crimson. The immaculate production design envelops you in crumbling manses choked with creeping rot and mildewed opulence.
The film’s sound design is equally unnerving. The skittering of rats in the walls, the groan of floorboards, the distant howling of wolves—it all coalesces into a susurrating whisper of encroaching doom. Composer Robin Carolan’s score is a funereal drone, with strings that shiver and scrape like fingernails on a coffin lid.
Eggers’s Dark Fairytale
Beyond the horror lies a twisted fairy tale of repressed female rage and longing. Like the vampire himself, Ellen is trapped—corseted by the suffocating mores of her era, bled dry by the men who claim to protect her. “It calms the womb,” says the sneering doctor as he tightens her bonds. Only in her secret communion with the monstrous “Master” does she tap into her true power and hunger.
Ellen, meanwhile, goes to live with her pallid, saintly friend Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) and her brusque and businesslike husband, Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, struggling with an underwritten role that requires him to do little more than repeat lines of dialogue in a tone of blustering incredulity).
Much like Ellen, Eggers’s Nosferatu is a film possessed. It seeps into your bones and stains your subconscious like a nightmare you can’t quite shake. The film’s dark fairy tale aura and unabashed Gothic excess may prove divisive for some, occasionally teetering on the edge of camp. However, there’s no denying the mad, feverish artistry on display.
Nosferatu is a haunting vision from a director at the height of his powers, ably abetted by a cast and crew fully attuned to his mad wavelength. It’s a film that demands to be experienced on the largest screen possible, in all its disorienting, phantasmagoric glory. Give yourself over to its dark spell, and it will follow you home, lurking in the shadowy corners of your psyche. Eggers has created an unforgettable symphony of terror that does Murnau proud.
Key Takeaways:
- Robert Eggers brings his signature immersive style to a blood-chilling remake of the 1922 silent vampire film.
- Lily-Rose Depp delivers a haunting, star-making performance as the tortured heroine Ellen Hutter.
- Every frame drips with Gothic atmosphere, unease, and repressed desire.
- A visual and aural symphony of dread with impeccable production design and unnerving sound.
- A twisted dark fairy tale that seeps into your bones and haunts your subconscious.
