“Does evil come from within us, or from beyond?”
Ellen Hutter
I was surprised that an auteur like Robert Eggers would choose to remake an existing film, but unlike the plethora of creatively bankrupt recent remakes he has gone back 100 years to F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film, blending it with a dash of Tod Browning’s Dracula. The original Nosferatu adapted Bram Stoker’s novel for German audiences, but Eggers was apparently drawn to its story granting greater agency to Ellen, the female lead, in her ending of the vampire curse. His goal in remaking it was for the whole film to be told from her perspective, not merely the final act, and the physicality of Lily Rose Depp’s performance sells this choice. The city of Visburg remains Germanic but its inhabitants all have decidedly London sensibilities. There are some peculiarities in the casting that will amuse fans of vampire cinema — Nicholas Hoult switches sides from his recent outing in Renfield, while Eggers regular Willem Dafoe previously played a fictionalised version of the 1922 film’s star in Shadow of the Vampire. Eggers has always been inspired by older styles of filmmaking which he uses to craft atmospheric worlds, but here the storytelling feels as ponderous as it does ominous. The gothic visuals are sublime, like the black and white castle approach with Hutter a silhouette at a white snowy forest crossroad. Bill Skarsgård may be relegated to the shadows for most of the film but he embodies Count Orlok magnificently, from the asthmatic, rhotic accent to the spidery fingers and smooth movements, behind the most noticeable change to the iconic bald vampire — a bushy, Vlad Tepes moustache. Nosferatu is evocative and frequently absorbing but one is left feeling that Eggers is perhaps stronger without the unnecessary constraints that come with respectfully retreading old ground.
7/10
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