It’s funny to think that, once upon a time, some particularly petulant horror fan might have considered F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu to be the Asylum version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – it was an unauthorized adaptation, after all – but tell someone today that you’re planning on adapting Dracula and they’ll shrug their shoulders. Say you’re adapting Nosferatu, and people lose their minds. It’s held in high regard for a few valid reasons: That 1922 film has a frankly bizarre story behind its production (Shadow of the Vampire is only somewhat of a fictionalization, given the amount of heady occult energy that went into its creation), Count Orlok’s design is up there with the sets and Cesare in Caligari as silent-horror iconography, and because it’s often the only film of Murnau’s that most film students see (please, someone liberate Sunrise – a film so good the Academy made a special award for it at the first Oscars – from whatever pit it is in), given just how influential it was on one of the most popular genres at the multiplex and that Murnau tragically died in a car accident before he could continue dabbing on the rest of the artform. In truth, reading analysis or about the making of is far more interesting than actually watching the fucking thing, especially without some form of live accompaniment – God help you if you’re watching it with some organist’s original compositions as a soundtrack.
This is a lot of prologue to say that I don’t particularly think of Nosferatu as some sacred cow – neither did Werner Herzog nor the cool dude who crowdfunded an adaptation directly before the film hit the public domain – and that Robert Eggers has done an incredible job of adapting it for modern audiences. Keep that in mind, too: This isn’t, as many will point out, a Dracula adaptation, and so coloring within the lines as established in Murnau’s film isn’t some great sin. It’s the third (or fourth) version to make it to screens in the U.S., so the heady revisionism that some demand from a remake in order to justify its existence doesn’t come into play until the fifth or sixth one. Moreover, there’s enough subtext here to provide those justifications, especially if one is willing to put the film in the context of Eggers’ career, specifically about how the public read The Witch. Ultimately, Nosferatu fits well as another story in the weird-fiction magazine that Eggers’ filmography resembles – all we’re missing is ads for sea monkeys and bizarro letters to the editor, and his oeuvre is ready to go to print.
You likely know most of the specifics here – you’ve watched some adaptation of Dracula, or Murnau’s original, or picked up the basics via cultural osmosis – so I’ll skip the lengthy recap of the plot, given that it’s impossible to spoil a film that’s over 100 years old. Instead, I’ll tell you what it’s like. Eggers’ stew of influences here has a surprisingly large number of ingredients: most screen versions of Dracula have at least some aspect of their make-up represented here. Bela Lugosi fan? You’ll enjoy the dramatic interiors steeped in the classic Universal Monsters style. How about Coppola’s take? While there’s no Keanu, there is a beautifully cinematic and slavishly period-accurate recreation of 1830s Germany (and Transylvania, of course). Are you a Hammer acolyte? Well, you’ll love the banter between Ralph Ineson and Willem Dafoe, playing off of each other as they try to diagnose exactly what the hell is happening to Lily-Rose Depp, while her husband (Nicolas Hoult) is trying to make his way back from what might be the worst real-estate dealmaking venture anyone’s ever embarked upon, unless you’re Adrian Brody in The Brutalist. What’s wonderful about this blend is how familiar yet foreign it feels: Eggers puts so much of the modern world into this old tale that the additions are often indistinguishable from details preserved from the original.
Perhaps the most interesting innovation is Orlok himself, played here by a totally unrecognizable Bill Skarsgard. Seriously, he is so unrecognizable in this role that I worried that I’d gotten the casting details wrong in the news posts I’ve written about the movie – he looks and feels more like Alexander, for whatever reason, perhaps because of how imposing his presence is on the screen. Eggers knows he can’t compete with the original design, echoed by Herzog and Kinski in their remake, and so he opts to go down a particularly historical path with how he presents the count to us (and, also, avoid the antisemitism charges that a direct reference to the original design might invite). Orlok is the spitting image of Vlad Tepes’ embalmed corpse, sporting a thick Berber mustache as well as furs and a Ushanka to cover up all of those open sores that remain. He drinks blood in a gruesome fashion – no light bite marks here — and is horrifying enough to make one wonder what, exactly, would lead a young girl into his (telepathic) arms. This is what it means to truly live deliciously – you’ll die consumed by the thing that you’ve invited in as a way to escape your circumstances.
This is what I find most intriguing about Eggers’ variation on Nosferatu – he had intended it to be his second feature instead of The Lighthouse (and trust me, I am thankful that he held off long enough to explore different styles for his next two features)– and it’s hard not to read that as a direct rebuke to the “girl power” read of The Witch. I’ve never really agreed with that interpretation, as, despite it being attractive and potentially a compelling revisionist take on the Puritan folk horror fable, the movie doesn’t work as a cohesive whole if you’re viewing Satan himself as Anya Taylor-Joy’s liberator from her father’s strict religiosity. The fact that such a take exists and that Eggers’ subsequent films deliberately played into that ambiguity (The Lighthouse as a buddy comedy, The Northman as a delusional Hamlet) is why he’s a genuinely fantastic filmmaker. There is a way for one to enjoy his movies as he intends, but there’s enough freedom by design for one to find their way through the text and still emerge perfectly satisfied. The difference in his making a relatively straightforward remake is that the conversation expands to the whole of his work: this is the first of his films that feels reflective, and it’s a welcome shift in perspective.
If you’ve read my writing on Eggers before, you know what this last paragraph will entail: once again, you’ll be reminded that this guy is the most metal motherfucker working in mainstream horror cinema. The Northman was a Sleep-like banger of stoner metal power, and Nosferatu is one of those high gothic funeral doom records that have nerds of all stripes wailing about how fucking heavy it is, perhaps even released alongside an alternate recording of the same tunes done by a full orchestra. It has a broader appeal than those bands typically do, but it’s perhaps the best representation of that vibe put on screen in recent years.
Ironically enough, if you’re planning a rewatch of Murnau’s original, I’d recommend going with some drone metal – depending on which version you watch (that movie has about 50 different lengths, thanks to the various speeds that the transfers were captured at), there’s a Sunn O))) record that will probably fill out the whole runtime. Sync up the tracks, and get yourself well-acclimated to the heavy-ass vibes across the gulf of time.