Nosferatu (2024)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Body Count

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Wintry, unsettling, and deeply menacing, Robert Eggers's remake of Nosferatu is a worthy companion to the century-old original; it's a horror movie that doesn't so much scare you as it chills you to your core.

It's 1838 in Wisborg, Germany. Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) and Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) are happy newlyweds. Unfortunately, they are to be separated, as Thomas's boss (Simon McBurney) sends him on a lengthy trip. He must travel to a remote castle in the Carpathians to meet with the peculiar Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgård); the Count wishes to buy a house in Wisborg and insists on signing the papers in his home.

After Thomas's departure, Ellen begins to hear voices and receive mysterious "visits" from something sinister. At the castle, Thomas falls ill and finds himself unable to leave, or to return to Ellen. Ellen also begins showing alarming symptoms, and despite the best efforts of friends Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) to care for her, she grows worse.

Her doctor (Ralph Ineson) suggests that they call upon Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), an expert in alchemy, mysticism, and the occult, for help. Meanwhile, Thomas manages to escape, and after much tribulation, arrives back home. Wisborg seems to have been affected by a plague; rats are everywhere, brought by a ghost ship. Count Orlock has arrived. It's only a matter of time before the creature will attempt to possess Ellen for good.

F.W. Murnau's masterful original German Expressionist movie from 1922 was an uncredited — and unauthorized — adaptation of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Eggers's Nosferatu pays homage to that original impulse, keeping everything Germanic, even if characters speak English.

The movie has a highly stylized look, not exactly Expressionist, but definitely designed for a visceral impact. It's partly in black-and-white and characters are often confined or trapped by their surroundings, whether it's an ominous woods or a roadside inn. It also has a foreboding soundtrack, with a gloomy, doleful music score. (Part of the movie takes place at Christmastime, and it may be the most un-Christmassy movie ever made.)

Perhaps due to the nature of the material, there doesn't seem to be much room here to showcase performances (as there was in Eggers's The Lighthouse), but that only adds to the movie's bitter cold feel. It's certainly of a piece with Eggers's other movies, which also include The Witch and The Northman. He's not afraid to go truly dark, well beyond what most horror movies are ready to accept. A viewing of Nosferatu will likely be absent of screams, and will instead be thick with a disquieting silence.