The best horror movies abide by a simple rule. More scares, less monster close-ups.
A young Steven Spielberg backed into that approach when his mechanical shark wouldn’t behave on the “Jaws” set.
Director Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” shelves that conventional wisdom, and his sumptuous update suffers as a result.
The auteur’s craftsmanship remains unmatched. Few directors take the care Eggers does with his camera and crew. Everything in this vampire remake looks perfectly dreadful, with a suffocating sense of death and decay.
You’ll admire “Nosferatu” without a thirst to watch it again.
Once again we’re luxuriating in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” by way of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent shocker.
Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen is haunted by visions that chill her to the bone, captured with an intensity that mirrors the film’s grim vision. She’s pushed past them to find her true love in Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, having a busy Fall with this and “Juror #2”).
He’s forced to leave his beloved to secure a real estate deal with a client from a far-off land. That’s Count Orlok, brought to life by professional monster maker Bill Skarsgard (Pennywise from “It”).
There’s movie merch and then there’s this. Official #Nosferatu Sarcophagus bed! What?!? Can fit someone 7 feet tall. Crazy way to promote a film…but I kinda sorta also want one?
pic.twitter.com/2Uv6T7fuNq
— Gitesh Pandya (@GiteshPandya) December 9, 2024
Poor Thomas is overmatched from the start, but the makeup that transforms Skarsgard into his latest ghoul isn’t your standard vampire aesthetic. His features are bulbous and unsettling, and Eggers insists on giving him endless closeups.
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That hardly builds a sense of mystery. It feels … ordinary, like how Michael Myers graces every other scene in the recent “Halloween” trilogy.
Less is so much more, and it robs the decrepit Count of his mystique. Skarsgard’s rumbling voice, though, sets the mood all by itself.
We know where much of this is going. Eggers doesn’t reinvent the vampiric wheel, but he does highlight Ellen’s impact on the story. She’s a critical part of the narrative and the fight against the beast.
The young Depp has a face that feels stripped from a forgotten era, and she captures the spirit of someone torn between loyalty and guilt. That latter factors into a third-act revelation, a thread that could have been teased out in greater detail.
Willem Dafoe co-stars as the Van Helsing-style hero who doubles as an exposition factory. It’s like his character jumped in Doc Brown’s time machine and gorged on every recent vampire film he could find.
Dafoe’s character clashes with the tone Eggers has so painstakingly built elsewhere. “Nosferatu” is dead serious until it isn’t, and the tonal whiplash isn’t flattering.
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Pacing is a problem here. “Nosferatu” feels surprisingly dry for a genre effort, even one as painstakingly delivered as what we see here. And if you’re going to sail past the two-hour mark you better share character arcs that make it worth our while.
We could have used more of the Renfield-esque Simon McBurney, intensely creepy without being buried in prosthetics.
Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke offer a parade of haunting images, including the clever use of extended shadows. A few of the murderous moments will stalk your dreams, including an invading army of rats.
That’s “Nosferatu” at its best, a maelstrom of horrors meant to scare us silly. Too often we feel a different kind of chill, the chill of indifference to a pristine presentation.
HiT or Miss: “Nosferatu” boasts powerful performances, evocative production design and the good sense not to monkey with the source material. So why does it keep viewers at arm’s length?
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