NOSFERATU movie poster | ©2024 Focus Features

Rating: R
Stars: Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Willem Dafoe, Simon McBurney
Writer: Robert Eggers, based on the screenplay for NOSFERATU by Henrik Galeen and the novel DRACULA by Bram Stoker
Director: Robert Eggers
Distributor: Focus Features
Release Date: December 25, 2024

“Nosferatu” is another word for “vampire.” It is also the title of the still-influential 1922 silent German horror film, directed by F.W. Murnau and scripted by Henrik Galeen, based on Bram Stoker’s novel DRACULA.

Werner Herzog directed a 1979 adaptation, NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE, and last year, there was another version, directed by David Lee Fisher and starring Doug Jones.

Now director/writer Robert Eggers has brought forth 2024’s NOSFERATU. Set in 1838 Germany, the film is physically beautiful, with a more narratively lively plot than many iterations of DRACULA possess.

When Ellen was a young girl, she was agonizingly lonely – and, unbeknownst to herself, somewhat supernaturally gifted. When she wished for some sort of supernatural companion, angel or demon, her longing awoke the long-dormant Transylvanian Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård).

Since then, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) has had vivid nightmares about the Count, even though he’s far away from Wismar, Germany. Now Ellen is married to real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and is relatively happy.

However, when Thomas’s peculiar boss, Mr. Knock (Simon McBurney), orders him to go to Transylvania to complete the sale of a local property, Ellen is overcome with foreboding. She is unable to articulate her fears well enough to keep Thomas at home, but he’s sufficiently concerned for Ellen’s well-being that he sends her to stay with friends Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) and their two young daughters.

The story from here goes more or less as we expect, except that Ellen has far more knowledge and agency than the female lead does in most DRACULAS/NOSFERATUS. This is refreshing, and adds some texture and spine to the overall narrative.

For once, our vampire antagonist is not in the least seductive. He is a monster from the id. Skarsgård’s performance allows Orlok the self-awareness that he is basically an unending appetite in physical form, and his appearance is progressively more disturbing.

We also get a surprising level of warmth and affinity between Depp’s Ellen and Corrin’s Anna. Way too often in period dramas (and horror movies), friendships between women seem more about courtesy and manners. Here, it feels genuinely emotional.

This is one of the movies where all of the German characters have English accents, the Transylvanian Count speaks in Eastern European tones, and Willem Dafoe’s Swiss doctor is gently mid-Euro. As it’s consistent, we can go with it.

Filmmaker Eggers has made the intriguing choice to depict the more human-world scenes in full color, while the horror of Orlok, his influence and his domain are rendered in monochromatic hues. Both are rendered gorgeously in Jarin Blaschke’s stunning cinematography and Craig Lathrop’s rich production design.

Eggers’s NOSFERATU is not the swoony, opulent equivalent of director Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. It has similarly grand ambitions, but is harsher in look and meaning. This is not an epic of romantic yearning over the centuries, but rather of power unleashed before its time. This NOSFERATU harks back to the folk horror of Eggers’s 2015 THE WITCH, where there’s a sense of icy wildness permeating the proceedings.

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