Robert Eggers’ remake of F.W Murnau’s prototypical horror classic is a gothic fever dream of carnal obsession and spiritual repulsion.
Winter, 1838: Estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult; acquitting himself as the thwarted hero) departs Wisborg, Germany. His destination is the castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård; essaying another classic movie monster), his firm’s mysterious new client, in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. His wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp; pale, dark-eyed, tragically hopeful) begs himself not to go. You see, she’s having bad dreams…
This new Nosferatu plays out with a terrifying inexorable logic. Part of the dread comes from the familiarity of the Dracula story, which Eggers’ imbues with a real sense of monstrous evil. Skarsgård’s Orlok is not the creeping mesmerist of Murnau, or the longing outsider of Werner Herzog’s 1979 version, or any of the various suave incarnations of Dracula. Instead, he’s a hulking, cadaverous figure,1 a sort of seductive Frankenstein’s Monster, physically corrupt and corrupting.
Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is stark and haunting, its palette washed-out, its shadows insidious. Even when not in black-and-white, it is chilly. Only the domestic scenes of the Hardings – stuffed-shirt Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson; very much his metier of late) and dutiful Anna (Emma Corrin; a largely thankless role) – have a sepia warmth to them; though we know the tranquility cannot survive. Robin Carolan’s score, blending orchestral majesty and frightful ambience, lends an undercurrent of unpredictability and dread.
Willem Dafoe brings a touch of lightness in his portrayal of the eccentric Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, to which Ralph Ineson’s Dr. Sievers provides a deadpan counterpoint. Simon McBurney’s manic, literally bloodthirsty Herr Knock could be a scene stealer were it not that the film itself is so controlled in its delirium. “Providence”, Knock’s watchword, is as likely to bring plague as salvation (a theme more explicit in Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake than the ’22 original).
As in The Witch2, Eggers explores the supernatural as a gateway to forbidden desire in all its perverse forms. Nosferatu is a fine, disturbing addition to his filmography.
- With a book-appropriate ‘tasche.
- Whose breakout star Anna Taylor-Joy was originally set to play Ellen.
