Nosferatu

It’s a remake of one of the most influential horror movies ever made, the German film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which was itself an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Credited with giving rise to the vampire myth that has became a staple of modern day pop culture, the original was released just four years after World War I ended, when Germany was in deep mourning and many of its citizens were turning to the supernatural for answers.

The new Nosferatu, while adhering fairly closely to the original story, adds the voices, the dialogue, and richer layers to the gothic tale about obsession, love, and mortality.

Director Robert Eggers has built a reputation for his singular visual style and meticulous attention to authentic period details, and he uses his talents to create a world of shadowy dread that amplifies the existential questions that defined the original.

The director and his cinematographer set the film apart by taking inspiration from 19th-century European Romantic paintings, with chiaroscuro lighting and intricate framing that create an unsettling effect. The narrow, cobbled streets, the sharp relief, and the cavernous interiors can make you feel haunted.

But much of what drives the film – and its many awards nominations – are the performances. Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok is terrifying and tragic, a creature who longs for connection to Ellen. What makes the character even more fascinating is that you barely see him until the film’s third act, and his big reveal on screen made me recoil – he was that terrifying.

Opposite him, Lily-Rose Depp delivers a memorable portrayal of the object of Orlok’s obsession, Ellen, whose quiet strength and moral struggle anchor the story. There are moments when Orlok appears to possess Ellen and she falls into a trance-like state. Then, suddenly, she unleashes blood-curdling screams.

Nicholas Hoult plays Ellen’s devoted new husband, Thomas, a real estate agent assigned the daunting task of visiting Orlok to negotiate the sale of his castle in Transylvania. From the moment he embarks on his journey, mysterious events begin to occur, and Thomas begins to suspect the man is something more than a creepy old aristocrat. Hoult’s portrayal is gripping—his wide-eyed terror and shallow, panicked breaths upon meeting Orlok will make you forget his memorable turn as the comedic actor from The Great.

Dafoe’s character, Prof. Albin Eberhart, is shrouded in ambiguity as a respected but controversial scientist called upon to make sense of the events in the village. He seems odd to the locals, but as some of his assumptions prove to be right, he is cast in a new light, now required to provide more answers – just as we’re in need of them ourselves.

Finally, there’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the wealthy Friedrich Harding, a confident skeptic of vampirism who stands in for our own resistance to the whole idea of the supernatural. He takes a turn as inexplicable events begin to unravel his certainty and chip away at his sanity.

All of this tension is sharpened by the score, composed by Robin Carolan (The Northman), with an interplay of eerie strings and ghostly chorales. And every creak, whisper, and breath takes on a heightened effect, amplified by the sound design, especially Orlock’s hair-raising voice, which left me unnerved.

But it’s the decision to make the film about the psychological terror of the vampiric myth — and its setting in the early 1920s, the wake of the first truly global conflict of World War I — that really resonated with me.  Orlok’s hunger isn’t just for blood but for the permanence of love and the need to control something in a world that reduces everything to dust.