Watched: 12/29/2024
Format: Cinepolis Theater
Viewing: First
Director: Robert Eggers
I am looking forward to seeing this movie again soon, which I believe I am planning to do with PalMrshl.
SPOILERS BELOW
As advertised, Nosferatu (2024) is a gloriously detailed, stylized retelling of the 1922 classic horror film. That original film, in turn, was a copyright-infringing German production that liberally stole from the novel Dracula, changed some names, set the story in Northern Germany, and had a production company with weird, cultish origins.
In general, I was looking forward to my third Robert Eggers film, having previously seen The VVitch and The Northman. A big, studio remake of Nosferatu is something I think could go a lot of ways, but if anyone working now was going to do it, Eggers was one of the strongest choices. I'd only seen two of his three prior films, but I think - and argue with me here - Eggers isn't so much concerned with telling wildly original stories, but telling almost primordial stories and relaying them in ways that show why those stories work, and that it's in the teller and telling that we get at what the stories are about in ways that declutter them from romanticism and remove some of the guard rails.
Example: The VVitch is the earliest Anglo North American arcana - it captures the old world fears we brought to the New World as we faced it's sprawling wilderness we couldn't quite tame. Against that backdrop, our concerns about the unknown were turned inward and metastasized. Those concerns continue to manifest and mutate in paranoid American fantasies that go well beyond the scope of this post. The Northman is a sort of proto-Hamlet, digging into Nordic tradition and beliefs, and bringing the brutality of the stories in the Eddas to life, exploring revenge in a world that relishes might making right. With some promise of glory for the fallen warrior along the way.
For veterans of prior incarnations of Nosferatu, whether we're talking the 1922 film or the 1979 version by Werner Herzog, there's a mix of old and new in Eggers' vision. It's certainly, at it's core, not too different from the original 1922 version, but expanded and... really well considered.
It seems that here in 2024, we've ceded the notion that Stoker's novel of Dracula is just a leaping off point and we'd rather make things called Dracula that circle the romantic drain and suggest that ol' Drac isn't really such a bad sort, he's just got an affliction and maybe Jonathan should step aside for Drac and Mina to get married and raise some kids. Basically - once Bela Lugosi made Dracula sexy on stage and then film, it's been a steady path that, for some of the public, led us straight to sparkle vampires and star-crossed romance. And there's a place for that. I am not here to tell you not to like a thing. But let's not pretend that Mina's pity for Dracula at the end of the eponymous novel was a last second twist suggesting this agent of the devil was a misunderstood anti-hero. Mina's pity was simply that of a woman with a heart looking at a cursed being.
Me? I like two kinds of vampires - (1) wacky Count Floyd-type vampires/ rock n' roll vampires and (2) horrible hellbeasts that kinda/sorta resemble humans and are pretty singularly minded about being awful murder machines hiding in the shadows.
I haven't seen that many vampire movies, but in my book, Eggers delivered on the spawn-of-the-devil type vampire better than anyone in decades, dropping a horror film that doubles-down on the notion of *horror* at the center of the events. Whether you like this sort of grand guignol is going to be up to the taste of the viewer. But this version of a Dracula-story is about the evil our vampire, Count Orlok, brings with him, like someone dragging a blanket behind them, mindlessly knocking over everything in their path.
For those familiar with the Dracula story, again, the beats are familiar if re-cast a bit with the retelling, based on the 1922 film. With this movie, that's a feature, not a bug. We experience an ever-rising sense of dread that spins into the outright horror of what Thomas has stepped into, which is not softened by, say, three hot lady vampires willing to make all this seem not so bad. We see the evil as it boards a ship, and we see how it plays out in the streets of Wisborg.
A lot needs to be said for how this film looks, sounds and feels. I do wonder what the actors thought they were filming, because the script is good on its own. Had this been filmed like a Hammer movie with wide shots and occasional vampire close-ups, we'd still have a remarkable script with fairly detailed characters and bits. It goes hard on Orlok's evil, the torture of Ellen and the way science blinds the rational-minded doctors and gentlemen of the film, accidentally assisting Orlok by ignoring his evil.
But this movie manages to have a unique look while also borrowing from the original film's tricks. There's little in the way of wackily expressionist sets, but there's much in the way of expressionist mood, lighting and use of space. We're shooting in real Romanian castles and on
The camera remains often center-framed, keeping the focus of the viewers eye on that we're meant to see in the darkness, and keeping us locked in as scenes shift between fantasy and reality, nightmares and the waking world. George Miller's little trick really does work. But part of why I want to go back and re-watch the film soon is to not just be locked in like I'm riding down a single path. I'm curious about what I'll see on a second viewing, and not compelled to feel as locked into the center of the frame and keeping up with the story beats, the novelty, etc...
I'd be hard-pressed not to mention the film's sound design as well, paired with the creature design for Orlok - an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård under a vile make-up job that looks like the rot that was suggested in Stoker's own novel more than maybe any incarnation to date. But Orlok lumbers, huge and clearly a formerly even greater version of what he is now. He breathes with almost a death rattle, each breath a gasp. And he exsanguinates his victims in deep, vile gulps (which I'll expect other vampire movies will steal from in the near future). Add in whispers, skittering and other noises, and it's a signature soundscape for this film.
The horror of Orlok is that he's bringing his pestilence to a world on the cusp of understanding disease and maladies of the mind. We're no longer mistaking madness for demon possession, and we know plague comes from rats. And as Orlok brings death to Germany, even in the face of a sudden plague (at Christmas!) only a few true believers know what's happening.
Unlike the original, the Harding family pays the steepest of prices for harboring Ellen, and this was where I tipped my hat for the movie going so @#$%ing hard they (DOUBLE SPOILERS) go ahead and kill two children and a pregnant woman on screen. If you had any idea that we were going to redeem our vampire, by this point we know, hey, fuck that guy...
Aaron Taylor-Johnson was in two movies this year that I saw - this and The Fall Guy, and he was, honestly, great in both. And I salute Eggers for seeing the potential here for the Hardings as more than polite supporters of Ellen and Thomas. Emma Corrin, who I only know from Deadpool & Wolverine (Cassandra Nova. I know!), is phenomenal in what c/should have been a thankless part as Anna. Her conversation with Ellen as they miss each other is weirdly mind-bogglingly effective in performance and editing.
Depp (yes, daughter of Johnny) is going to be just fine after this movie. For the many of us who forgot Johnny Depp had children, and certainly hadn't seen her in anything before, she shows up and turns in an all-timer of a performance that's wild and sympathetic and heartbreaking.
Yes, there's an obsession with the Mina-character, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), but whatever the connection is, it is not a love across an ocean of time. It's an odd psychic connection, manifesting from Ellen's unmastered psychic nature, and manifesting physiologically in the way that would make a 19th Century doctor clap his hands with delight - Ellen does have too much blood in her body. Her birth and existence is enough to pull Orlok from what seems to be centuries of slumber and draw him to her from the time of her youth (it's not stated if it's the onset of puberty, but I wondered...). It's only been Ellen's love for Thomas (a well-cast Nicholas Hoult) that seems to tamp the connection and her anarchic spells of fits and seizures that have long plagued her at night.
There's a lot to unpack here, and 90's-era film critics would reduce what's happening to sex. But what we think sex is in this film is a genuine question that lies within Ellen and what is within her that has drawn Orlok. Is it innate evil? Is she a part of this? Did she make it happen by existing or willing it? By reducing it to "sex", there's a suggestion Ellen desires a form of rape, of brutality and murder - and I think - maybe that's also part of why I want a second viewing, to unpack a bit more of what's happening with Ellen. There's certainly indications all of those things are true.
Honestly, I will not be shocked to see fannish takes that she willed Orlok into existence, which is semi-true. But reducing it to "other people are afraid of sex, but not ME, your fearless critic!" sure feels like it deserves a "and therefore...", because sex alone isn't that interesting and doesn't cover much of what we see.
This story is old.* It's from 1897 and 1922. This film's job is to succeed at retelling that story as well as it can, and freshen it up for modern audiences and give it new life.
Mostly, I was just grateful for Eggers' respect for the material and using it as a framework to dig a bit deeper, expand a bit but without losing the points of the 1922 Nosferatu. He updated characters to more three-dimensional beings and cared about them as a living people who do things like have sex and care for each other in ways that are not just polite. I think the horror of the original is palpable, and what Herzog brought to the movie was an historical realism and crushing terror of Orlok's corruption. To me, this movie is the next step, complete with astounding visuals, soundscapes and character design - and we should mention the costuming, which I assume was accurate and which is stunning.
They showed a few horror trailers prior to this movie, and I was struck by how suburban and pedestrian they felt in the wake of this movie. In some ways, you want to shake horror movie makers and remind them that film is an experience, that showing us people getting brutalized because they didn't play it safe is not the only option (even if it does maybe more presently speak to our surface fears). That you can put whatever you want on screen, and maybe the 110th zombie movie this year isn't that exciting anymore.
Nosferatu still felt fresher than some well-cut trailers showing you the scariest thing in life is not having easy access to conveniences or that strangers are scary.
It is likely the pro-vampyre apologists will trot out the old familiar reasons that we should tut-tut the film. It's xenophobic. It's about sex being scary. It's about othering people we don't understand. And I think if you're watching Orlok drain someone like a Slurpee you can also entertain that the movie is about other things, too.
*I am aware of some of the pedigree and influences that predate Dracula. But it's older than, say, Saturday Night Fever.
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