NOSFERATU

Beyond the lush visuals and the brooding atmosphere Nosferatu is a movie that keeps horror, obsession and lust at such a cold, calculated distance that it fails to get your blood pumping.

For director Robert Eggers remaking 1920s expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu has been an obsession since he started making movies. But while he fleshes out the story, sexualises the tale and makes every penny of the considerable budget count on-screen his version doesn’t really add anything new to the vampire mythos, neither visually nor thematically.

The plot hews close to the original, which famously stole wholesale from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Once again Count Orlok lures realtor Thomas Hutter to his Carpathian castle in a ploy to get free reign over his wife Ellen, the vampire’s object of desire. When Orlok subsequently descends on the German town of Wisborg, a hellish plague is unleashed.

If you’re expecting a daring, new approach to the source material you’ll be disappointed by Nosferatu. The overt sexualisation of the tale is nothing new, nor is the indulgence in gothic imagery or the explicit horror, soaked in colours washed away to such an extent you might as well be watching a black-and-white film.

The problem isn’t that Eggers reveres the original too much – while including some iconic images from the 1922 version, he doesn’t replicate Murnau’s most famous shots – it’s that he saps away all the raw edginess and chooses a cold, calculated, often theatrically stilted approach that lacks bite. As a result you never get the impression that the characters are in real danger, emotions aren’t allowed to run wild and the whole thing feels like a detached, risk-free post-modern imitation.

Don’t get me wrong: Nosferatu remains a picture that’s worth watching in the cinema, but compare this to an equally sumptuous, equally sexual adaptation from over thirty years ago - Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a movie bursting with life, invention and cinematic joy – and you’ll immediately realize that Eggers’ remake, despite several virtues, is mostly pointless.

release: 2024

director: Robert Eggers

starring: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe