Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe
Screenplay: Robert Eggers
133 mins. Rated R for bloody violent content, graphic nudity and some sexual content.

How do you remake what is technically a rip-off? Back in the 1922, director F.W. Murnau released Nosferatu, a fairly obvious take on Dracula that was not approved by Stoker’s estate, and all copies of the film were presumably destroyed. That is, until years later, when a print was found, and Nosferatu was saved. There was an “official” remake in the 1970s from Werner Herzog, and now we’ve arrived at 2024’s passion project for director Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse). Eggers has been adamant about his Nosferatu remake, and I get it. I love the 1922 film (not so keen on Herzog’s remake) and really most adaptations of Stoker’s novel, but the question remains: how do you remake a rip-off? Well, we should get tips from Eggers himself, as he’s turned in not just a masterful retelling of the Nosferatu story but one of the best films of the year and one of the best gothic horrors of any year.

Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp, Tusk) has become obsessed with a horrific being that invades her thoughts. When new husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, The Menu) it sent away to finalize the paperwork for the ancient Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, It) to purchase property in Wisburg, it soon becomes clear that Orlok is the very creature of Ellen’s nightmares. Orlok is the unholy, nosferatu, a vampire on a path to claim her body and soul for himself. Now, Thomas must enlist the help of a local doctor and an obsessive and unhinged professor to save his wife.

Eggers has walked the tightrope quite expertly with Nosferatu, crafting a film that is truly a take on Nosferatu and separates itself nicely from the Dracula mythos. He embraces the differences between the two stories and helps to solidify Orlok as a different beast from Stoker’s creature of the night. Eggers writes Orlok as parasitic, slowly wiggling his way into Ellen’s unconscious and then conscious mind, and he’s aided by a creepy and haunting performance from Skarsgård as the vampire. Skarsgård has played characters like Pennywise the Clown and other nightmarish characters, but he’s bringing something new to Orlok, and with less light and screen time than you might think. His is a very vocal performance, and his voice is so drastically different that I almost wondered if Skarsgård was even doing the vocals, and the combination of makeup effects with his performance make for an instantly iconic and memorable take, not just on Orlok, but any vampire.

I would argue that there isn’t a bad performance in the bunch, but I was particularly impressed with Depp’s portrayal of Ellen. I’m not bashing her but she’s the one actress in the film who I have not seen much from. I was also a bit nervous when I had heard that Anya Taylor-Joy (an actress I adore who has been a frequent collaborator with Eggers) had vacated the role and Depp brought it to replace her. Depp’s performance is very physical, very guttural, and while I think she has a little less to work with than other characters, she is excellent in the role.

I could gush about all the performances in Nosferatu, but I’ll just call out an actor that I believe will not show up in other reviews, one that I think gives the best performance in the film given the amount of screen presence he has: Simon McBurney. McBurney plays Herr Knock, a variation on a character from the 1922 film and essentially a Renfield-esque type who sends Thomas on his path to Orlok early in the film, and his excellently recreates the character of Knock, particularly his descent into madness while also adding a lot more to the film than Murnau’s film contained. I loved the way his character serves as a siren of the plagues set to unleash in Wisburg, and McBurney matches and then exceeds the energetic performance of Alexander Granach in the 1922 film. I would argue that he and Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) as Professor Albert Eberhart von Franz, the crazed professor and student of vampirism make for two wonderfully twisted sides of the same coin.

Eggers has always preached his dedication to historical accuracy over everything else, and I’m always shocked that he can accomplish his vision while sticking to that rule. From the production design to the costumes, makeup, and music, this is a elegantly-presented production from top to bottom. It’s a movie that feels like it could have been made a hundred years ago, even though it uses a number of newer technologies to meet Eggers’s vision. It feels like a cousin to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Dracula adaptation, which captured Stoker’s book in a way that Eggers captures the tone of Murnau’s original film.

Nosferatu is a tragic and bleak retelling of Murnau’s 1922 classic, and I daresay it succeeds at translating those elements for a 2024 production and elaborates further upon them, crafting a film that expands down interesting new avenues and sets itself far apart from Stoker’s Dracula. Moreso than ever, Count Orlok stands as a sickly equal to his romantic cousin, Dracula, and Eggers’s film smartly focuses on what made the two different to begin with. While some may find the material a bit too cold and isolating (and I’m not sure if the film’s final moments will please audiences), it’s bleak and unflinching horrors are simply too delicious to pass up. Featuring astounding performances and some of the best cinematography and production elements of the past decade or more, Nosferatu is a necessary remake that I’ve seen three times and just can’t wait to watch again. This horror show comes with the highest recommendation.

4.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Robert Eggers’s The VVitch, click here.