Nosferatu (2024) Review

A Mixed Bag

At the time of writing this review I’ve seen the movie twice. The first time was in theaters with my girlfriend, and the second time at home courtesy of sailing the high seas. I had spent the time to watch the original silent film with her before going in, and as someone who has enjoyed Eggers’ previous work I was looking forward to seeing this movie. I’m not one for the “movie going” experience of theaters and overpriced candy and popcorn, although the novelty of heated seats and reclining chairs is a creature comfort to be sure.

I suppose I should stop before this turns into a tirade on the movie theater experience as a whole, but who am I to judge. I’m a snob with movies, I rely more on word of mouth and the recommendations of my friends from their letterboxd reviews. It’s interesting how both movies and games went from being big by word of mouth, had massive media infrastructure built up to review the “industry” and have insider knowledge only for it to go to shit so fast that we’ve returned to the ol’ reliable word of mouth for quality.

So, let’s get to the movie.

Nosferatu is a modernized retelling of the 1922 silent film directed by Robert Eggers starring Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård and Willem Dafoe. Of Eggers’ impressive filmography so far, this was certainly his weakest undercut by the direction of the last 40 minutes of the film but we’ll get to that. I’m sure we’ll see in the following months, even more so when the film hits streaming services for YouTube video essayists to get their clips for their future commentary pieces, is how much this film is focused on Ellen and her relationship to Count Orlock (Nosferatu) and sexual/moral/religious undertones that are played on it with respect to the female psyche.

I had to chuckle when walking out of the theaters, to see poor Thomas Hutter go through absolute hell, be taken advantage of to allegedly sell his wife over to a spawn of Belial, have his literal life force sucked out of him, only to deal with a crazed woman who had made a pact in her youth to a demonic force tell him that he could never satisfy her like Orlock does.

Thomas Hutter’s real mistake was that he married a woman who got alpha widowed by a demon.

The cinematography was excellent, and there were several parts for scares and jumps that felt incredibly choreographed, it was very clean. Plenty of passing transitions and shots with incredible sets, costumes, and realism. Perhaps I’m growing into a bit of a prude (no pun intended) the nudity of the film probably wasn’t necessary to get the point across, if anything to supercharge the eroticism that Ellen Hutter (played by Lily-Rose Depp) experiences in her encounters with Orlock (Skarsgård) both consciously and unconsciously. Eggers takes the bones of the century old silent film and puts new flesh and sinews that take away the awkwardness of silent film suspension of disbelief and plants you firmly into a world where Western Enlightenment fails against the Esoteric and Ancient Practices of the past. This is carried over from the silent film, where Thomas Hutter would read a book about Vampires and the Seven Deadly Sins only to laugh and scoff at it, and instead in Eggers’ version we’re given Willem Dafoe’s Swiss Occultist to carry the point home.

For me, that was the biggest takeaway. An 1838 German town in the midst of Christmastide feels quaint, idyllic, but its religiosity is more of a window dressing than anything with spiritual depth and roots. It’s only in the depths of the Carpathians is anything remotely spiritual is seen at all. Even the Gypsies with their “superstitions” illustrate an understanding that evil is real and can manifest itself on this earth, as Thomas watches the band of gypsies use a naked girl and their own calls to the spirits to find a vampire only to be promptly staked and killed in the grave. The legend and ability of Nosferatu (serving as decent exposition and set up for the audience) is given to a near-dead Thomas Hutter in the confines of an Orthodox Christian Convent, with a Great Schema Nun explaining.

It would make sense, in a West where God has certainly been abandoned in left for dead, and in just a decade after this film would take place Europe would be swept up in the revolutionary fervor of 1848, all of this would be maddening to a very rationalistic set of people experiencing unspeakable horror. Even when being confronted about the supernatural/other-worldliness of the events unfolding in their German city, Thomas Hutter’s friend Friedrich Harding (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) goes off in disbelief about “Medieval Madness.” Willem Dafoe’s character is a treat, written in a way that feels like he’s stealing every scene he’s in but if anything it’s just deliberately written that way for his eccentric performance.

I haven’t had the chance to read Egg Report’s review, but his tweet comes to mind when it comes to the film’s attempts to ask and answer questions about female sexuality.

It’s actually all those things.

Dafoe’s character, so by extension Eggers, doesn’t really want to commit on the question at all outside of the ending and even then it’s a pithy conclusion to a monstrously large question. Even if Eggers wants to talk about female sexuality, or the feminine form and condition in the early 19th century Eggers tries his best to recenter it towards the mysticism and the supernatural circumstances the characters are in. The film itself begins with a young Ellen alone, in the deep night on a full moon, hands clasped in prayer asking for someone, anyone to be hers. An unguarded spirit, a desperate plea for help, and the temptations of the flesh as she’s drawn out by powers beyond her ken and left naked and defiled.

Anyone with an elementary reading of spiritual warfare and Christian mysticism will see this plain as day as the demonic, something which is left relatively untouched with some mentions of God and faith but firmly reorients the conflict with a simple thesis statement: The Modern Age is not Equipped to Handle Ancient, Supernatural Forces. This thesis buried in the last 40 minutes of the film as Eggers gives the audience the impression that there might be an out, that Nosferatu/Orlock will be defeated as the men try to save the town from Orlock and the Plague that he brought with him to Wisburg. There’s even the implication that Ellen would be the one to take him on, almost setting up the idea she would be strong enough to destroy him, Dafoe confers with her alone saying that in a heathen age she would be a great priestess of Isis, but must face him alone in this age of science and reason. You’d almost expect the chance for her to overcome his control, her πάθος could be resisted enough to even give a stab in the chest to Nosferatu, (at a certain point you would welcome an Arya Stark style end to Nosferatu like the Night King) but we are left with her willingly using her feminine wiles, her eroticism to bring about his end and her own to let the beast be killed while his tomb and those he turned be burned and “sanctified.”

The cinematography, costumes, music, acting, and set design leave you distracted from the fact that you’ve got 40 or so minutes to go before the conclusion of the film that was plainly written out to you plain as day actually happens. This could have been shorter, or at the very least given actual tension as we’re told we have three days to beat Nosferatu as Ellen resists him but there’s no tension to be had because the only way this ends is for her to keep him in the sunlight. The entirety of the Thomas’ struggles and fights to make it back to Wisburg (all the way from the Carpathians, mind you) is left off screen as we focus again on her. There isn’t much agency at all to Ellen either or her friends, who are left to watch her suffer and undergo the worst kind of attacks of mania, arousal, and fever almost as if they are helpless parents watching a child get worse. It reminded me of the beginning of The Exorcist in the way Ellen Burstwyn’s character helplessly watches her child’s condition get worse despite the best help available.

Instead her fate was sealed since she foolishly, youthfully, and ignorantly called out in the darkness for help. The game was rigged from the start, and we the audience are just like the Hardings are left to watch it play out and succumb to the madness ourselves.

My first viewing of Nosferatu left me satisfied, the point Dafoe made that the modernity of the West was enough to leave me walking away like a giddy little chud and call it good. Watching it again I find myself seeing more and more glaring issues as the we’re left to watch a tragically possessed woman bring herself to the point of orgiastic release in which she says both as temptress and perhaps honesty, that Nosferatu was a better lover than her husband was. I feel like the Red Pill/Manosphere types might have a kick with this movie.

Even as Dafoe’s point is made, there’s a scene where Ellen is laying in bed with Friedrich’s wife, not in any sort of sexual sense but seeking comfort in the arms of her friend who has been supportive of her all the way through. She gives her the Cross that she had been wearing around her neck, and telling Ellen that God is with her. But nowhere is Cross called or signed upon by the men and women in Wisburg, that Christ is not invoked at all, and that the greatest weapon given by the Son of God to man is not used once. You’re misdirected, subverted as the camera focuses on that cross only for it to be a Chekov’s gun that isn’t once discharged. Now this is most assuredly deliberate, and I'm being given my media literacy award as we speak. Yet the others watched as invocation and rings and consultation with other esoteric artifacts are used by Dafoe, it's left slightly undercooked even as the alleged “madman” is correct about everything. And his proclamations, we're left waiting out the clock as secular men try and take on the supernatural on their own. Again, this is the best lens to view the film, but I'm left wanting more as the only way to win according to movie is to engage in human sacrifice and hope for the best.

This movie leaves you wanting so much more with these characters, who were incredible in their performances, begging the question what if they took this more seriously at the beginning were better equipped both spiritually and scientifically. Out of all of Eggers’ movies, this one is certainly his weakest, but hits the nail that he’s been hammering away at in his other films; that there is indeed forces beyond our power and control and we should very much be wary of their effects on mere mortal men.