A really clever thing the trailer for Nosferatu did was allude to the horror of its titular monster but never show him. The trailer editors, the promotions department at Focus Features, and of course director Robert Eggers himself, knew that the figure of Count Orlok, though ostensibly Dracula from the eponymous novel, has such a uniquely iconic terrifying look that it would be best to leave this interpretation of it solely for the theatregoers. It speaks to the unusual power of that 1922 German silent film and the haunting image of that frightful vampire with its sunken eyes, pointed ears, clawing fingers, and all round dreadful expression, more discomforting and occult than any interpretation of Dracula to succeed it. We all have that idea of what this character looks like, reinforced perhaps by the 1979 Werner Herzog remake in which he looks much the same. But how does modern horror master Robert Eggers convey him?
Nosferatu, the first English-language remake of what was initially an unlicensed Dracula adaptation is Eggers’ first return to truly supernatural horrors since his debut The Witch. And based on his very period-adherent, hypnotically stylized approach to his previous films, it seemed since its announcement a perfect pairing of subject and artist. In many respects, he does ultimately demonstrate that is true with this film. There is no other director I would want to take it on, who would both honour the original classic and make the work definitively his own. He does this successfully, but there is something missing.
The film follows very closely the traditional plot, with of course all the character and place names slightly altered from the novel. Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), an estate agent in the fictional nineteenth century town of Wisborg, Germany is sent to a decrepit mansion in the Carpathian Mountains to sell a home to the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), at the same time his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) begins experiencing horrifying visions and violent seizures connected with a secret demonic pact she made years ago.
This last point is of course a post-source invention, though one that has in some similar fashion recurred in a few adaptations that have sought to give the Mina Harker/Ellen Hutter character more of an interesting role in the narrative in her relation to the Count (the most elaborate of course being in the Francis Ford Coppola edition). This Ellen, with her past flirtations in the occult, recalls most to my mind Eva Green’s interpretation of a similar character on Penny Dreadful. Eggers’ illustration though comes in more evocative ways, less literal in terms of its dark allusions, though still frighteningly potent.
And certainly he does not disappoint when it comes to the frights, whether in the creeping atmosphere or the freakiness of some of the beats themselves. The Expressionist style of the original film rears its head in such things as the road up to Count Orlok’s castle or the shadow of his hand extending over all of Wisborg when he arrives there. One particularly haunting sequence is when Hutter is picked up by a ghostly coach in the middle of an empty, foggy road. There are few outright echoes to the original movie, but the most compelling is a shot that frames Hutter, enshrouded by a dark arch in the manner that Max Schreck’s Orlok was first introduced. Orlok himself is kept in shadow through much of the film with only scant details of his appearance palpable -though the most glaring one is clearly his big Cossack moustache, a characteristic of the novel’s Dracula that rarely has made it over in adaptation. It fits though with the wizened yet aristocratic figure he is, much as it conceals the iconic bucktoothed fangs. And the way Eggers uses him, whether in quick flashes of jump scares or more disturbing sustained shots of him feeding on Hutter for instance -his body contracting as he drinks up the blood- it is vivid. You can tell that, as usual, Eggers is thinking a lot about grim authenticity. He evokes the same kind of paganism as he did in The Northman; there is a cult ritual in a village of Orlok’s keep, and especially once Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) enters the picture, that heaviness of unknowable darkness, just as in The Witch, gives greater stakes to what horrors Orlok can wreak on Ellen and Thomas and their friends.
But the effect is not quite so immediate and intense, and a big part of that is rooted in Eggers’ attention to details and aesthetics coming at the expense of the more human and psychological aspects of the story. Except for what was the very broad throughline of The Northman, Nosferatu is the first time Eggers is adapting previous material -and material that is fairly plot heavy compared to his other films. On the surface, he translates a lot of that well, and especially the fear in the characters. But he is palpably not very interested in them, even Ellen. Ellen's relationship to Count Orlok is only barely considered, and Eggers doesn't go into the connotations or context behind why she pledged herself to him in the first place. He largely averts in this way the subtextual avenues of the story, leaves meaning and metaphor ambiguous -a departure from other versions of this story as well as his own prior movies, which were seeped in psychological study and curious thematic cogency. The Witch presented a far more effective Ellen Hutter than this Nosferatu. The cast, for as good as they are, are vessels more than they are people -functional to the plot and to the requirements of the horror, but barely defined apart from that. And this accounts for why a couple tragedies late in the film seem sapped of any sting beyond mere shock value.
There is a certain gnarly aspect to that shock value though, whether it is the decrepit state of Orlok's decaying body or Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) biting the head off a pigeon, or the hundreds of rats that appear to follow the Nosferatu wherever he goes. The production is quite compelling, particularly in Wisborg, which looks like a perfect nightmare town in much of its dark architecture and cold climate, as though awaiting Count Orlok from the start. It's a harsh atmosphere, the last place you'd want to live -especially once the plague comes to town. And Eggers did tap into at least one theme of some visual and emotional pertinence, as resonant now as it was to the original movie over a century ago: the effects and paranoia of a pandemic.
Nosferatu was a passion project for Eggers that at one time seemed impossible -and I'm glad he amassed the clout to make it happen (in further vindication, it is on track to being his most successful movie yet). His voice and vision meshes very well with the material, and though it doesn't surprise so much perhaps because of this, it is impressive nonetheless. Its lack of a more probing curiosity does hinder it somewhat, makes it less thrilling and feel less intuitive than his other movies. But there is enough of Murnau's spirit, and the haunting one of that original Count Orlok present that it is worthy of its namesake prestige.
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