If Max Schreck embodied Orlok as a verminous predator, and Klaus Kinski a centuries-long isolated human emancipated from the soul, then Bill Skarsgård, in Robert Eggers’ retelling of Nosferatu, plays the Count as an undead monster whose bloodless husk survives only to spread pestilence. Sounds terrifying. There’s just one problem: in reality, it isn’t.
Since 1922, filmmakers have tampered with Bram Stoker’s frankly mediocre novel to grapple with great historical trauma in a way only cinema can. FW Murnau, in his A Symphony of Horror, unfurled a terrible plague on a fictional German town to address the very-real Spanish flu: an illness that cast on those lucky enough to escape its grasp a constant suspicion of neighbours, a burning need to find someone, anyone, to blame for the chaos.
Through Nosferatu the Vampyre, an homage to Murnau’s film, Werner Herzog rekindled a meaningful connection with Germany’s great cinematic past – one he considers cut short by the Nazis, who either robbed the nation of its best filmmakers through murder and exile, or absorbed them into the machine. There’s a clear raison d’être there.
But Nosferatu (2024) is curious. Eggers struggles to place the myriad hurt of our time in his version of this undying story, presenting little argument for a new angle other than to realise a passion project. We stand four years north of our own great plague, yet the rats running throughout the streets of Nosferatu’s Wisborg carry the same pestilence we’ve already observed over 100 years ago.
Nosferatu (2024)
This isn’t to say Nosferatu is devoid of originality. Shiny, new objects of fascination can still be found adorning the walls of Orlok’s castle. Take Lily-Rose Depp’s absorbing performance as Ellen Hutter: an âme damnée whose strife expands on the estate-agent-adventurer plot by way of her falling madly, irretrievably into a pit of melancholy dug out by the absence of the quietly indifferent husband, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), and a mysterious night stalker who, in a fit of somnambulism, she makes a death pact with.
There’s a slow, burning sickness about Ellen that goes beyond her Victorian pallidness, a squirming virus that advances throughout Thomas’ truancy. We could easily attribute this to Linda Muir’s stunning costume design, which spotlights each nuanced detail of Ellen’s deteriorating state. But this would ignore Depp’s physical commitment to the role, with her pained, if not slightly orgasmic, moans calling in the murky depths of evil, all while straddling a fantastical sensuality.
In the beginning, at the closure of the newlywed couple’s honeymoon, there seems to be hope. Thomas is preparing to sell a dilapidated property to a Transylvanian eccentric named Orlok – at the behest of Simon McBurney’s creepy, ingratiating Herr Knock. The assignment promises a better life, at the expense of weeks apart from his wife. But Ellen doesn’t want money; she wants Thomas. Not the chasm of emptiness to come, which is to be occupied by the engulfing, loathsome touch of the very man (creature) Thomas has ridden off to visit.
A dampened atmosphere
However, it is here, within Thomas’ journey across the Carpathians, where Nosferatu encounters its first major tumult. The mythos – the European countryside abuzz with peasants’ talk of an infernal evil atop a mountain; the great, unending castle complete with ancient artefacts and labyrinthine halls – is half-baked. The slow unfurling of Orlok’s wretchedness is cut short. And the fear factor of the monster’s eventual reveal is deprived of heft.
In Murnau and Herzog’s versions, there is a feeling we could become hopelessly lost in the castle, trapped in one of its many rooms till we become yet another priceless ornament. But Eggers scales back the building’s size, opting instead to generate atmosphere from Jarin Blaschke’s mesmeric photography and Orlok’s opaque husk.
Skarsgård: Gothic without the horror
The monster itself does receive some refreshing changes. Orlok’s ability to move here from there in a flash, achieved through a feat of seamless continuity, lends the Count an air of impossible magic and menace seldom seen since Ford Coppola’s Dracula. Old school cinema magic.
What’s more, Skarsgård’s inhuman gruffness, a skill acquired through operatic training, eschews Orlok’s courtly congeniality for the tones of an undead warlord slain in battle. A return to Stoker’s Vlad the Impaler influence. This is matched only by Orlok’s ability to control the elements, a clash between the natural and preternatural, where even the rats in the walls anticipate the vampire’s diabolical movements.
But does this constitute scary? Do we genuinely feel fear when Thomas rips off the sarcophagus lid and raises the pickaxe to Orlok’s chest? No. The Count is somewhat lacklustre: an Imhotep-esque cadaver quite literally over 100 years apart from the verminous insectoid that Max Schreck made so special.
Unsetting the scene
Another thing: where are we? Of course, the impressive purpose-built sets are supposed to belong to 1830s Germany (more specifically the Lübeck-influenced Wisborg). But the soot-covered structures, captured in a freezing blue hue, recall the Victorian London exhibited in Parker’s Dorian Gray or Burton’s Sweeney Todd. One wonders if Eggers might have swerved this jarring, temporal rootlessness by following in his filmic forefathers’ footsteps: shooting in real locations with an abundance of extras.
Final thoughts
There’s special courage in Eggers’ decision to take on Nosferatu, a moment akin to King Arthur’s retrieval of the sword from the stone. After all, to grapple with Murnau’s film – viewed more as a cultural force than mere cinema – is to invite the prospect of litigation, mass ridicule and even disaster, as past contenders have suffered.
And Eggers’ bid is partially successful: Depp’s sylph-like sauntering into diabolical enchantment is beauty personified, as is the gorgeous photography touched by the fantastical insanity of German expressionist tones. But make no mistake, Nosferatu is a Gothic horror defanged by a lack of, well, horror. And that doth butter no parsnips.
More film reviews from Sam Quarton
The Legend of Hell House: a Christmas horror flick for the anti-festive film lover
The Seed of the Sacred Fig: enlightening dissident cinema from Leeds Film Festival
Debshishu and Smita Patil: Leeds International Film Festival’s spotlight success
