NOSFERATU– 4 STARS

No matter the genre, from the darkest horror movies to the fluffiest rom-coms, every successful film– and I mean every—creates their own tangible atmosphere that plants audiences smack dab into their inescapable spaces. Viewers feel and believe they are pulled into a picture’s environment. If an immersive environment is not achieved, viewers only observe from a detached distance. They might appreciate what they see for the two-hour entertainment vacation, but the film will never fully absorb them and vice versa. As if there was any doubt considering his vitae, Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu remake has the atmospheric pull of a goddamn gravity well in the cosmos consuming galaxies.

Set in the fictional town of Wisborg, Germany in 1838, Thomas Hutter (2024’s busiest man Nicholas Hoult) and his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Deep, with her first film role in three years) are newlyweds living as the guests of their married aristocrat friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (upcoming Kraven the Hunter star Aaron Taylor-Johnson and recent Deadpool & Wolverine villain Emma Corrin) and their two young daughters. Thomas is an estate agent who has been tasked by his supervisor Herr Knock (Simon McBurney of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation) to travel to faraway Transylvania to finalize the deal on an old, ruined home in Wisborg with a new client named Count Orlock. 

Upon arriving at Count Orlock’s majestically woebegone Transylvanian keep (provided by Corvin Castle nestled in the rugged topography of the Czech Republic), Thomas discovers a very disturbing and reclusive Count (embodied by the top-billed professional movie demon Bill Skarsgård of It and The Crow). The introduction of blood with an accidental slice of a thumb shoves the estate business aside and activates the carnal, vampiric urges existing within the castle, sending Thomas through a tumultuous gauntlet of survival. Meanwhile, Count Orlock embarks on a seafaring voyage to Wisborg to claim what and, more pressingly, who he truly desires.

Stemming from prior encounters, Ellen Hutter sees Orlock’s actions and becomes increasingly more possessed by his allure, leading to violent convulsions and extreme hallucinations that baffle the Hardings and Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Eggers regular Ralph Ineson). Make no mistake. The mustachioed wraith is coming for her, as echoed by the similarly rankled Herr Knock becoming his compromised and frenzied harbinger. The situation reaches dire straits to where occult expert Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (good luck charm Willem Dafoe, genuflecting towards his own Shadow of the Vampire history) is brought in to assist on the matter and, for better or worse, dump exposition as the hypothesizer weighing the severity of curses coming to asphyxiate any hopeful goals of providence.

LESSON #1: THE VERBIAGE OF OBSESSION– Beyond Dafoe’s blathered details and perilous predictions, the visualized psionic bond between Count Orlock and Ellen Hutter is where Eggers’s screenplay varnishes Nosferatu with verbiage of obsession and re-centers the entire saga on Ellen over Hoult’s husband. The mask of melancholy and out-of-body nightmares– conveyed impressively by Lily-Rose Depp in a harrowing and contortive performance– spring forth from imperative words like “covet,” “dream,” and “devour” shared between her and the tall, sinewy figure cut by Bill Skarsgård. Even in subtitles spun from Skarsgård’s low register dialogue underneath spectacular makeup from David White, the thickened infatuation truly pierces. Compared to Francis Ford Coppola going the decadent and– let’s just say it— horny route in 1992 with his central romance between Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Eggers aimed to frost any hot-and-bothered thermometers with dread, and his approach works for that aim.

LESSON #2: AMPLIFYING ATMOSPHERE— All of that comes back to the atmosphere created by Robert Eggers, starting on the scripted page and continuing to the artistic quality. Oscar-worthy ambience, like that of Nosferatu, is more than choosing a striking setting and employing top-notch production design from Craig Lathrop (The Northman). Alas, it’s the greater tenor created by the background soundscape of Robin Carolan’s score, the rustic sound mix noise, and the framing and lighting choices of cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. Moreover, there’s choosing a pace to one’s atmosphere, and the audio and visual ingredients support the sense of Count Orlock’s stalking pursuit. Blachske’s slow tilts and whip movements are precise and methodical across a very monochromatic palette to the aural Gothic energy of Carolan. Sealing the deal, the performative aspect of the characters’ movements and reactions within those production elements become irrevocably linked to the atmosphere.

Nosferatu’s carefully calibrated cauldron combining those steeped elements creatives evocative and unforgettable imagery that rightfully honor’s F. W. Murnau’s original German expressionist silent film from 1922, an influential work that has inspired Robert Eggers since his childhood. Even in the medium’s limited elements 102 years ago, Murnau created atmosphere in a superior fashion. Imagine the effect of adding spoken dialogue alone— fantastical and shiver-inducing as it is– and you’ve got a heightened experience even before blood spurts and modern tricks come out of the bag. 

LESSON #3: IN THE MOOD FOR A MOOD– Appropriately, and perhaps even ruinously to a degree, approaching Nosferatu requires being in the mood for a mood itself. For many, the stark and startling films of Robert Eggers are existential affairs and appointment viewing for those cinephiles who overuse the term “elevated horror.” To others, his level of haunting disquiet triggers them all the wrong ways. No matter where one sits, audiences will marvel at the strong female nucleus of Nosferatu and the vigorous lyrical poetry given to unholy terror. As his own master of the horror genre who set out to achieve a decade-plus passion project, Eggers unleashed his vision in an unshackled and uninhibited way only he could accomplish.