GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★☆ (3.8/5)
Rated: TBA
Written for the Screen & Directed by: Robert Eggers
Inspired by the Screenplay: NOSFERATU by Henrick Galeen
and the Novel DRACULA by Bram Stoker
Produced by: Jeff Robinov, John Graham
Produced by: Chris Columbus, p.g.a., Eleanor Columbus, p.g.a., Robert Eggers, p.g.a.
Starring: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Aaron Tayor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney.
What is the dark trauma that even death cannot erase? A heartbreaking notion. This is at the essence of the palpable belief in the vampire. The folk vampire is not a suave dinner-coat-wearing seducer, nor a sparkling, brooding hero. The folk vampire embodies disease, death, and sex in a base, brutal, and unforgiving way. This is the vampire I wanted to exhume for a modern audience.
-Robert Eggers
‘Blood is the life.’
Come to me, come to me.
You, you.
The wind blows through the sheer curtains.
I swear, she promises.
It’s a dreamy yet stark beginning; the girl, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) in a trance as she awakens Nosferatu (Bill Skarsgård) from his slumber to become an awoken corpse, walking upon the earth.
A corpse with appetites.
There’s a nightmarish quality to this gothic tale. This is not a romantic version of a vampire story. This vampire is a plague.
Jumping from 1830s Baltic Germany to years later shows Ellen married to Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult).
Newly home from their honeymoon, Thomas’ employer, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) sends Thomas into the depths of Transylvania to complete a transfer of title to an ancient descendant from a long blood line; the count described as, eccentric.
For extra money, Thomas is willing to go even as Ellen begs him not to.
It’s the travelling to Count Orlok’s (Nosferatu) castle that mesmerises; the silence of Thomas walking down a road through an ancient forest as snow falls.
The beat and chink of horses pulling a carriage through the dark, the tilt as the world shifts, the perspective bending to the will of Nosferatu as the carriage door slowly opens an invitation.
Then the wolves that follow.
It’s an invitation to a new world that’s dark, where fire casts shadows of reaching fingers and pointed nails and nightmares of blood.
The soundtrack feeds the mood of foreboding, the rise and fall of breath.
It’s moody movie.
Composer Robin Carolan states, ‘There’s a lot of dread and claustrophobia in the film. The score helps with the feeling of escalation, and of this thing that you can’t quite see but that you sense is closing in on you.’
And Nosferatu knows Thomas is married to his bride. Nosferatu travels across the ocean to reclaim Ellen. She knows he’s coming.
Inspired by the Screenplay: NOSFERATU by Henrick Galeen and the Novel DRACULA by Bram Stoker, there’s the same lines of story, the travel of the husband to Transylvania to transfer the deed of a new home, the long-lost love.
There’s the best friend, here, Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) who wants to protect Ellen from the call of the monster.
But this is an inspiration not an adaptation so there’s something new here.
Unlike the tease of humour in the Frances Coppola film, like the unforgettable scene where a vampire’s head is cut off, a gruesome scene, that cuts to the professor tucking into a roast dinner – a well-timed shock to evoke a giggle. There’s no humour here in Nosferatu.
This is cinematic horror.
There’s a spare feeling to the angles of panning, the movement of characters, the endless corridors of a castle that resonates with Bram Stoker’s classic novel, where Nosferatu is nothing more than a monster.
Collaborating with production designer Craig Lathrop, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, costume designer Linda Muir, and editor Louise Ford, all of whom worked on The Northman, The Lighthouse, and The Witch, Eggers has created something that builds into a vision both magical and horrific.
