Nosferatu (2024)

Nosferatu”(2024) is a remake of the 1922 silent gothic horror film of the same name. In it, Count Orlok, a vampire, becomes obsessed with a young woman named Ellen Hutter. As Orlok’s dark influence spreads, Ellen’s husband, Thomas Hutter, finds himself entangled in a nightmarish struggle to save his wife and stop the vampire’s reign of terror.

Nosferatu Review

The original Nosferatu was a German silent film that aimed to bring Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the screen without having to secure the rights. After a successful lawsuit by Stoker’s widow, all copies of the 1922 classic were ordered to be destroyed. Fortunately for film enthusiasts, a few prints managed to survive the purge, and the film has since become an iconic piece of cinematic history, lending a number of enduring elements to the lore of Dracula.

2024’s remake of this unlicensed copy won’t find itself sitting beside the original in the annals of cinematic history. However, despite its lack of originality, writer/director Robert Eggers, who is best known for directing the underappreciated The Northman, starring yet another Skarsgård, has brought to life a dark and slow-burning thriller without succumbing to the modern cinematic crutch of ever increasingly over the top gross-out moments.

Instead, Eggers’s well-crafted gothic atmosphere and Robin Carolan’s excellent score burrow themselves beneath the audience’s skin, keeping everyone in a perpetual state of reluctant anticipation that’s judiciously slated by Eggers’s creeping suspenseful reveals.

Eggers and group also manage to stay fairly true to the source material, with one major exception. In 1922’s Nosferatu, Count Olok (re: Dracula) is attracted to and ultimately seduced (to his doom) by the unassailable virtue and purity of heart of the female lead. This time, played by Johnny Depp’s daughter, Lily-Rose Depp, a young Ellen Hutter, suffering from acute loneliness and possessing an unexplained 6th-sense that’s little more than a narrative ornament, invites Olok into her mind and, to a degree, her body as he begins a psychic sexual relationship with her which quickly turns into a living nightmare. Her “condition” lasts until she grows to womanhood and falls in love with the man who becomes her husband, played by Nicolas Hoult.

This is at the root of most of the film’s admittedly minor weaknesses. Her culpability makes her a far less pitiable character than that of the original Ellen, whose purity was tragically sought out for destruction by the personification of evil. It also draws too much focus onto a character who does little more than look scarred and repeatedly convulse in different locations and costumes throughout the film. In turn, this both needlessly stretches the runtime and robs more interesting characters-of-action from the time needed for audiences to fully invest in their well-being.

Furthermore, a handful of questionable visual elements occasionally break audience immersion—most involve nudity. None serve the narrative, and at least one instance is a complete and comical misstep that is disturbing for all the wrong reasons.

Ultimately, Nosferatu is a beautifully dark and well-paced film full of tension and strong performances. Still, it doesn’t quite transcend into otherworldly excellence due to truncated character development and focusing on the wrong character(s). It’s more than Worth it for genre fans to buy a ticket, but it won’t be remembered in a year.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Nothing

• Being a virtual beat-by-beat recreation of the original silent film doesn’t leave much room for modern sensibilities.