Nosferatu (2024)

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Nosferatu (2024) – R. Eggers

Everyone knows the story by now, having seen the Murnau (Max Schreck), Herzog (Klaus Kinski), Coppola (Gary Oldman), Universal (Bela Lugosi), or Hammer (Christopher Lee) versions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on film.  Murnau changed the names (from Dracula to Orlok, Harker to Hutter, Jonathan to Thomas, Mina to Ellen, and so on) but was still sued by Stoker’s widow. Director Robert Eggers retains Murnau’s names in this new version but, although it starts out as such (and includes some of the “authentic” or previously shot locations), this is not the same faithful remake that Herzog already made in 1979.  Instead, this is another “variation on a theme” wrought by a director for whom the material is very near and dear (he directed a high school drama production of the story). He claims he only made the film because he found a new angle: Orlok and Ellen have an original bond that precedes her marriage to Hutter which sets the plot in motion and draws Orlok to her, all the way from Transylvania to the fictional German city of Wismark.  Hutter’s journey to the Count’s castle (sent by Herr Knock/Renfield), his stopover in the Gypsy village, and his nights with Orlok remain similar but Eggers adds his exquisite visual panache, production design and sound design (as displayed in his previous films: The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Northman (2022)). Indeed, this version of the classic tale feels bigger and bolder (perhaps because I saw it in the cinema) and very soon, we have left the original narrative behind, leaving only its contours.  Lily Rose-Depp is magnetic (and also feral) as Ellen, Willem Dafoe provides some comic relief as Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (the Van Helsing counterpart), and Bill Skarsgård is, uh, very different from previous portrayals, as a gruesome Orlok (as a decomposing Hungarian nobleman). In the end, Eggers takes us someplace new, not scary (although there are a few jump-scares for the target audience) but definitely uncanny. Ultimately, he reveals the Count as, yes, evil but also as pathetic as anyone hopelessly obsessed can turn out to be.