In singing the praises of F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent odyssey Nosferatu, Roger Ebert described the film as, "in awe of its material. It seems to really believe in vampires." Murnau's film, based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, is not only largely responsible for spearheading Western cinematic tradition's understanding of vampires (what they look like, how they move, how they lurk and hunt), but is also radical in its manipulation of film.
When it comes to horror for Murnau, images conceal as much as they reveal, and the perfect embodiment of this dynamic are shadows. Shadows become menacing and ill-intentioned in Murnau's film, their velvety lushness dangerous for the evil potential they cloak. This is a lesson Robert Eggers has taken to heart.
In the way that Murnau's film was in awe of Dracula, Eggers's film is in awe of Murnau's, remaking the 1922 film with simultaneous faithfulness and ingenuity; Eggers manages to both honour and elevate the original. While keeping with Murnau's visual vocabulary, its understanding of the place of light in horror, Eggers adds his own stamp to Nosferatu, ultimately offering modern audiences a visual and cerebral feast.
Eggers takes painstaking care to remain faithful to Henrik Galeen's 1922 screenplay. Newlyweds Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) live in a small house in Wisborg (a fictional German town created for the 1922 film, as it was an unauthorized adaptation). Thomas works for estate agent Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), an eccentric and mysterious man exploits Thomas's desire to make more money and secure a better life for his new bride. A spellbinding McBurney delivers one of the film's most enigmatic performances, terrifying and often stealing the show. He abandons himself in the sycophantic and grovelling old man who, with great pleasure, abandons his sanity for the sake of his master, Count Orlok.
Knock assigns Thomas the sale of a local property to Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). It's a lucrative deal, but there's a catch: Thomas must travel to the Count, who lives in the Carpathian Mountains. Ellen begs Thomas not to go, and Thomas asks her to see reason — the Count, a man of old money, will pay Thomas well. Thomas leaves Ellen in the care of his friend Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Ellen begins having macabre visions, while Thomas becomes increasingly aware of the Count's vampiric sensibilities. Willem Dafoe makes an appearance as the disgraced and unorthodox professor of the occult, Albin Eberhart von Franz, a corollary to Van Helsing in Stoker's text, playing the man with sweetness and exuberance.
Eggers's own flair comes in the form of a psychological fleshing out of his characters' various insanities, Ellen's especially. The film opens with a deeply depressed and hopeless Ellen in her younger years; she is begging for anything from the universe to help her out of her misery. Count Orlok telepathically answers her call, and from that point on forces Ellen to become his lover, imprisoning her, becoming her shame. Ellen retains a measure of her melancholy in her adulthood, relatively stabilizing when she marries Thomas. But when Thomas leaves, she deteriorates, exhibiting paroxysms as though she were possessed, with her visions of Orlok at a vivid peak.
Depp is masterful in her role as Ellen, a woman driven by her sadness to the brink of madness. She carries Ellen with a sleepy defeat, keenly understanding the ways in which hopelessness ceaselessly manifests despite an improvement in her material circumstances. Depp's eyes are perennially wet, her lips trembling not so much with fear but with apprehension and understanding of doom. She doesn't seem so much afraid of Count Orlok, for she has lived with him for much of her life, as she does the hopeless abyss in which she was once mired and therefore fights tooth and nail to save Thomas when he falls into the clutches of the Count. There is a sober bravery to Ellen as Depp portrays the young woman, simultaneously weary and willing to fight.
Hoult's Thomas meanwhile is a compelling character, distinct for the better from Gustav von Wangenheim's Hutter in the 1922 film, who was all hubris and bravado. Hoult's Hutter clearly loves his wife; he understands her melancholy, and her fears for him seep into him. So do the fears of the townsfolk who warn him against going to the Count's castle. Thomas persists because he understands how the world works; he needs money if he is to survive in it. Hoult's Thomas is fear shaped by duty, teetering on the brink of the madness that simmers within Ellen.
The film works best in its focus on Ellen and Thomas's responses to the horrors around and within them. Thomas's journey to and within Orlok's castle provides some of the most stunning cinema I have ever seen. The young man makes his way to Orlok's castle hypnotized against his better judgment, pulled as if on a string by Orlok.
Once there, Thomas is easily lost within the shadows but also mesmerized by them. This wordless dance between Thomas and the swampy darkness within the castle is conveyed with beautiful lyricism by Eggers, who gracefully depicts a mind's slow and syrupy descent into age-old madness. Ellen is likewise pulled by shadows that sap her of her rationality and walk her to the edge of self-destruction. Eggers's Nosferatu, in stunning homage to Murnau's work, is replete with such dangerous, disorienting shadows that, with their claw-like hands, threaten to rend psyches apart.
But while Eggers's film is in awe of its material, it doesn't at the same time seem to believe in vampires. Because Eggers so expertly probes human horror and offers it its rightful place on centre stage, he ends up also sidelining Nosferatu. So interested is the film in Nosferatu's — the horror's — impact on the people of Wisborg, it seems to forget that Nosferatu, Count Orlok, is, as Ebert describes, "a man suffering from a dread curse." Count Orlok doesn't exist so much a cursed man as a monster walking on its hind legs.
While Max Schrek's Count was an animalized man, Skarsgård's Count is a masculinized animal. This would be fine, were it not for the simple reason why vampires — Dracula and Count Orlok specifically — terrify us; they have always posed an uncertainty. Is he a man or is he a monster? And this uncertainty has always led to downfall, for while we pause to ponder whether we can trust the Count, we realize we already have. We realize we have discounted the less feasible option, because of course this is a man, and the moment we make this rationalization is the moment we fall under his spell — the moment we sign our death certificate.
In Murnau's original, Thomas doesn't suspect the Count until the Count literally begins to suck the blood from his cut, but Hoult's Thomas is terrified from the get-go because Skarsgård's Count is so terrifying. Wearing the shadows like a cloak, Skarsgård's Count Orlok seldom emerges into what light Eggers affords him. Lurking just out of sight, out of frame, we seldom get a glimpse of him; we only hear him — like a great beast the earthly lens cannot fully capture, not an ancient man. His hands are talons and his voice is like the rumbling of a tiger's belly.
This is not to say that Skarsgård doesn't deliver a terrifying performance. Not seeing him fully certainly builds suspense. But when we do see him, he reveals himself to be a pale, hellish demon — something otherworldly, as opposed to a human turned pure evil. With Eggers's Count, we lose the fear of transformation, or even contagion, that vampires have always carried, and what remains is a fearsome monster that can easily kill us.
Eggers's Nosferatu is a captivating and worthwhile film, truly one of the best horrors of the year. It's a visual masterpiece and a worthy successor to Murnau's legacy, but I wonder — does it believe in vampires?