Screen Anarchists On NOSFERATU

J. Hurtado, Editor U.S.

Quoted from his review:

"It feels like a tragic sign of the times that as technology advances and we have access to a broader range of colors and lighting schemes than ever before in history, some filmmakers seem intent upon rejecting the opportunities that provides. It’s made even more disappointing that the film teases us with flashes of warmth – once in a tavern in Transylvania, and again as von Franz’s final plan comes to fiery fruition – meaning that everyone involved was capable of making the film visually interesting but chose not to. I fear that I’ve let my frustration with the film overwhelm my analysis of its merits, but after seeing it twice now, I can’t help but feel disappointed in the final result. If Eggers wanted to tell this story, why wouldn’t he bring something new to the telling? We all know the tale of Nosferatu, it’s so deeply ingrained in the hearts of the horror faithful that without a genuinely new and fresh angle, it’s barely worth revisiting. Unfortunately, it feels as though this version of the beloved story is satisfied playing the hits, and even then, it misses more than it should."

Sean Smithson, Contributor

Eggars' Nosferatu is a grand exercise in tone and setting, with brilliant sound design and exquisite sets. That said, I was left a little cold by the performances, and while this iteration of Count Orlok is a brave one, it left me a wee bit unfulfilled. That is likely due to the iconic image I have become so used to, from the original to Herzog's version, to the Tobe Hooper Salem's Lot vision. The uptick is, when a film takes some time getting used to, one can come out the other side with a developed appreciation, if not love for, a piece of challenging art. I liked Nosferatu fine enough, but I feel I still have some travelling to go to unravel all there may still be to it. That's a good thing. I'll absolutely be cycling back to it in the future, with mental shovel in hand, to excavate more.

Dustin Chang, Lead Critic

Robert Eggers, known for his meticulous research into the historical backdrop of the subjects he depicts, does it again with Nosferatu- a gothic vampire story told countless times before. So does all his research on the story based on myth, legend and folklore pay off on screen? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
Eggers reinterprets the unauthorized Murnau version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Nosferatu (1922), with an Eastern European folklore twist that inspired Stoker in the first place. So there are slight differences in the foreboding story of the supernatural in the age of enlightenment, but the choices Eggers makes here are not particularly cinematic nor thrilling.
In this new Nosferatu, the undead, Count Orlok is neither a suave Victorian age shapeshifter, nor shriveled up, rodent like creature. He is more like a zombie who is resurrected by dreams of a little waif who burdens herself to save humanity from the plague.
I can't help but compare this new film with Werner Herzog's take on the same story. Herzog's Nosferatu (1979), happens to be one of my favorites of all time. And Lily-Rose Depp, with all her convulsions and conniptions, is no Isabelle Adjani. In all aspects - cinematography, locations, music, acting, periodic and cultural details and eerie atmosphere, Herzog succeeded in getting that 'ecstatic truth' that Eggers can only dream about bringing from all that historical research. Even the sex and nudity (totally unnecessary, imho) can't liven up this dull, sodden new version.

Kyle Logan, Contributing Writer

As an early and eager evangelist for The VVitch who recognizes that The Lighthouse is the more interesting one but likes The Northman more of his follow ups, I consider myself a fan of Robert Eggers. But he missed me with Nosferatu.

While the look of the movie on the whole is undeniable, it's hard not to compare some of its early scenes to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem which received much disdain for being too dark to see its much advertised "Predalien" monster. The largely unbroken darkness for much of the first hour of Nosferatu makes it not atmospheric or oppressive in a meaningful way, but flattens its potential horror into something boring because there's no dynamic relationship with light on a grand scale. The attempts at dynamism come from some well but mostly poorly executed jump scares that confuse who exactly the movie’s for and what it’s goals are.

With those jump scares and the sometimes almost Conjuring style haunted house imagery, Nosferatu feels not just like a misguided foray into mainstream horror filmmaking for Eggers, but specifically an attempt to mimic James Wan. That mimicry works wonderfully in places, as Eggers follows Wan’s penchant for moving the camera through the sets to emphasize the spatial relationships between characters' bodies and the world around them, and terribly in others, the jump scares and more flat than atmospheric overcommitment to darkness.

2024’s Nosferatu feels stuck between wanting to appeal to everyone (formal attempts at multiplex horror and expository dialogues meant to ensure everyone understands the themes) and a sense of transgressive, arthouse superiority (there are themes to explain and while morbid and taboo sexuality is hinted at throughout, the final magnificent image is far beyond anything that came before).

Theodoor Steen , Contributing Writer

Fitting for a big vampire revival movie, I was reminded a few times of a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer-quote: "I believe the subtext here is rapidly becoming, uh... text". Whereas the versions by Murnau and Herzog played somewhat coy with the religious and sexual symbolism, Eggers doubles down on both those themes. Count Orlok becomes an inversion of Christ, with his own acolytes; a three-day resurrection and a disciple betraying him with the sounds of a roosters crow as a soundtrack, but lest we miss these themes... the acolytes keep talking about blasphemy. Just about the same thing happens to the sexual themes, where Eggers beats us over the head with the "cucked by the Count"-themes of the vampire-story, and makes it just the entire story. I admire some of the Nekromantik-like audacity of the final shot, but again, it feels like Eggers wields a sledgehammer, compared to the relatively subtle symbolic violence of his progenitors. Nosferatu is fun while it lasts, and has a grand vision behind it. It feels like an Eggers-film through and through, even adding yet another scene of vermin gnawing at breasts (like in The VVitch). But give me the original version or the Herzog-one anyday. This one pales in comparison.

Jim Tudor, Featured Critic

Even before this latest triumphantly Gothic endeavor, filmmaker Robert Eggers had established himself as a director whose work is not to be slept on. Alas, some critics at my advance screening of his Nosferatu remake saw fit to sleep through it. I, on the other hand, sat mostly enraptured by this rightly horrific tale of deflated masculinity and heroically sacrificial femininity (Lily-Rose Depp’s contorting performance is among the very boldest of 2024). Afterwards, with only slight trepidation, I uttered to the studio rep the never-used-by-me phrase “instant classic.” The last time I saw fit to immerse myself in a world of rats, plagues, and vampires was a mere few months ago when I finally caught up with Werner Herzog’s sublime Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) on the big screen. Before and after that, it was every time I scrolled my news feed. Eggers film, despite whatever minor shortcomings (those lightly regrettable CGI environs), joins F.W. Murnau’s silent original and Herzog’s version as potently transcendent; a vampiric fable more relevant to its real-world here-and-now than any Dracula film adaptation.

Ronald Glasbergen, Contributing Writer

Robert Eggers, the maker of the phenomenal film The Lighthouse, confesses his childhood love for the brilliant Murnau film Nosferatu, the story of Bram Stoker’s Dracula with a few twists. The love for the original and for the genre is evident in almost every scene and camera setting. From the misty, hazy soft-focus interiors and crowded streets of the German mid-19th century port town of Wismar to ingeniously applied camera loops at moments of intense emotion. That is what the heroine of the story, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), experiences when, as a teenager, she makes mystical contacts that form the origin of the entire story. Through a capricious twist of fate, she brings the terrible Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to life somewhere deep in the Carpathians. The story follows the twists that Murnau gave in 1922 to the story from 1897 by the Irish journalist Stoker. Count Orlok, the incarnation of the feared and spiteful Nosferatu, is not only out to satisfy his desires, but also to destroy or subjugate all living things. In style with the original, evil incarnate.

But Eggers does more, he wants his characters, the now happily married Ellen and her husband Thomas Hutter (Nicolas Hoult) who has to set off to faraway Transylvania, to really suffer. Whether that succeeds in this carefully staged and well-dramatized remake – the screenplay is by Eggers based on that of Murnau and Galeen from 1922 – is a matter of taste. Image, sound, including music and drama are worth it enough. For hardcore horror fans the film may be too soft, for the vast majority of a new audience it is a lovingly made remake and homage to a curious story, written somewhere on the eve of a new unknown time.

Olga Artemyeva, Contributing Writer

I was tempted to compile my whole opinion about Robert Eggers' Nosferatu with quotes from smarter people, starting with Pauline Kael's classic "I thought it was easy to see what to cut, but when I tried afterward to think of what to keep, my mind went blank". It would probably be fair too, considering for some reason we've been put through a two and a half hour long retelling of Dracula for approximately the 251st time.

There are not that many tweaks F.W. Murnau was forced to make due to the adaptation rights snafu, and generally it’s the same story, which features all the same connotations that this particular myth is always carrying with it, as vampires serve as a parable for any kind of “otherness” as perceived by the society. Eggers’ version doesn’t offer any new variations of the concept going heavy on sexual allegories, which by this point has been done to death - pun most certainly intended. Does Nosferatu at least offer something different aesthetically? Not really, if you don’t count the much talked about mustache, 2000 rats that were delivered to the set, and the fact that some of the great actors here somehow turn into comic relief throughout the film.

The only thing Nosferatu does effectively, in my opinion, is setting up a bigger conversation about the dubious trajectory that big contemporary directors all seem to take when we praise them too much and grant them those big creative advances (see also: Sir Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Damien Chazelle, etc). It’s a trajectory of going from taking risks and coming up with challenging concepts to delivering heavy-handed renditions of their own trademark style over and over. It seems as if lately we somehow tend to confuse imagination with technical and financial means, and artistic vision – with production value. Seriously, if we are now measuring creativity in rats, the dark times are truly upon us.

Me, Editor

Robert Eggers is an interesting filmmaker with a clear vision of what he wants to show. So far I have liked all his films but loved none, and his latest doesn't change that summery. He clearly has other interests than me, and that's fine. I respect a director who does his own thing.

When I heard he was going to tackle Murnau's Nosferatu as the source for his newest project, I thought it was a good fit. A drab Dracula that's all about mood, shadows and atmosphere? With a license to go crazy on historical detail? Go for it! And lo-and-behold, it's exactly what we got.

As with his previous films there is so much to like here. I saw the film at an IMAX and it wasn't darkness I saw, but the silver sheen of pale moonlight. This will be a devil to watch at home, for sure, peering at the screen through slitted eyes to make out any kind of detail, but in a cinema it was visually powerful. However, there is no denying I also started to appreciate Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula a lot more, with all its gleeful splendor and color.

Storywise I'm not sure I like this iteration much, with Count Orlok's origin story being both over- and underwritten. The sacrifice made is enhanced by the vampire's revolting physical appearance, a lich rather than a vampire. But then the sacrifice is lessened again by being made by exactly the source of Count Orlok's resurrection. For me, it felt like a nice conundrum but belonging in another story, not the Nosferatu one.

Added note: I saw the film with a bunch of youngsters, all recently turned sixteen years of age. Every single one of them had to show a passport at the cinema to verify their ages, and I was very interested what their opinions were on the film. Well, they were very uncomfortable with all the more adult stuff in it and on the inside I was laughing like mad. The discussions in the car as I brought each of them home were gold. Certainly, it was one of my favorite screenings in months. Honestly though, I cannot say the same about the film. Like with Eggers' other films, I like it more than I love it.

And there we have it: an eclectic collection of opinions. To quote an internet meme: we have some Nosferatus, some Yesferatus, and quite a few MEH-feratus...

So, what did you think of the film? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Tell us about it then! Check us on Twitter-X, our Facebook page or even better yet: that new BlueSky thing.