Nosferatu (2024)

Nosferatu, a Symphony of Terror had already been remade twice before 2024, and that's not counting Shadow of the Vampire.  There was Nosferatu the Vampyre, from Werner Herzog in 1979 and in 2023 a little-seen crowdfunded version with Doug Jones playing Count Orlok.  I was really not excited over another remake until I saw that the director was Robert Eggers who, like Herzog, has a certain style and vision.  Eggers took inspiration both from Herzog and F. W. Murnau to create his own version of the classic 1922 film, meanwhile further separating it from Bram Stoker's original story.

Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is in line for a promotion at his firm, and in order to seal the deal he accepts a task from his boss Knock (Simon McBurney) to travel to a remote village in Romania to obtain the signature of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) who is purchasing a ruined property in Hutter's town of Wisburg.  Thomas's wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is not wanting him to go as she has been having terrifying visions of what will happen to him but, concerned about their future, he insists on making the journey.

When he arrives the locals do what they can to convince him not to continue, but he eventually reaches the castle and fulfills his duties, only to become Orlok's prisoner.  He manages to escape, but by that time Orlok is on his way to Wisberg and to Ellen, who has been having fits in her sleep as the Count approaches due to a connection the two instinctively have.  The arrival of Orlok brings with him a plague upon the city, one which Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson) and his old professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe) must find a way of dispelling along with the Count himself. 

The connection between Ellen and Count Orlok is something established in both Murnau and Herzog's movies, albeit a bit more blatant in the latter.  While the sexual elements have always been there Eggers decides to amp it up mainly because he can, but it also allows Lily-Rose Depp to channel her inner Isabel Adjani from Possession.  I don't know if that was an intentional decision since Adjani played the role of Ellen in Nosferatu the Vampyre, but I wouldn't discount neither Depp nor Eggers deciding to reference both movies at once.

Nicholas Hoult isn't bad, though Hutter, just like Jonathan Harker, has always been the fake-out for the main character.  He gets fed on, spends most of his time sick, and then tries to help Dr. Sievers and Prof. Eberhart von Franz at the end, but I would argue that in both the Stoker story and Murnau's semi-plagiarism that Mina/Ellen remains the main character, with Ellen always being the stronger of the two.  Eberhart von Franz is based on Prof. Van Helsing from the original and was pretty much a background character in the previous films.  Not so with this one, as one doesn't simply hire Willem Dafoe and expect him to be window dressing.  He seems to be taking a lot of inspiration from the Anthony Hopkins portrayal of Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's Dracula rather than a doddering old academic who helps move the plot along.  

But, of course, the film is not called Ellen Hutter or Eberhart von Franz.  It is called Nosferatu, which has become (despite not being a real Romanian word) the code word for a specific style of vampire, namely the rodent-like revenant that Max Schreck created back in 1922.  It is here that Eggers makes the biggest change, relying more on the traditional folk traditions of what a vampire is, which is a walking corpse seeking blood.  Bill Skarsgård plays him well, as a dark presence with a heavy, deep voice that sounds like an echo in a tomb.  Instead of the creature we expect we literally get the walking corpse of a Romanian nobleman, complete with funeral clothes, accumulation of dust and filth and a figure that appears to have risen when he was already half decomposed.  Further, the sound design, with Orlok breathing as if it takes great concentration to do so and walking with leaden steps separates this creature even further from the person he once was. 

There is some additional exposition on how Orlok became the way he is and many references to early 20th century occultism (in which the original Nosferatu's producer, Albin Grau, had a heavy interest in) and alchemy.  There are even a number of references to the Expressionist borrowings of the original, with the importance of shadows rather than Orlok literally shapeshifting into bats and such.  Key scenes, such as the rats entering Wisburg from the plague ship, are recreated well, even though the coffin procession is nowhere near as impressive as Murnau or Herzog.  

Despite my usual dour opinion of remakes my instincts were right on this one.  Robert Eggers still infuses it with his own style - the use of natural light, painstaking attention to period detail - and manages to enhance the original story in a way that would have made F. W. Murnau proud.  If he could have got away with some of the scenes in this in 1922 he probably would have.  That still doesn't mean it's better than, or even at the same level as the original, but I do like it slightly better than Herzog's because I never liked the twist ending he tacked on.  

Nosferatu (2024)

Time: 132 minutes

Starring: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, Bill Skarsgård

Director: Robert Eggers