Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Nosferatu

Writer/ Director: Robert Eggers

Of the three best known Nosferatu movies, my favorite is the second, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski in the titular role. From its somber opening scene, an array of real corpses set to dark music by Popol Vuh, that movie is horror all the way down. The 1922 original is pretty to look at, and eerily done, but I am a heathen who doesn’t care much for silent films.

Which brings us to 2024’s highly anticipated version, directed and written by Robert Eggers (The Witch)—and, well, the news ain’t great. Like the 1922 film, it’s pretty to look at—gorgeous, even. And there are two scenes of horror that will stick with me—one involving Nosferatu feasting on children, and the last, lingering shot.

Not enough.

In the meantime, we get a lot of portentously delivered, sub-Shakespearean dialogue delivered in overwrought, melodramatic tones. Lily-Rose Depp is hard to watch as the cringing, crying wife of Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult, always solid), the man who is traveling to Transylvania to seal a “business” deal with Count Orlok. Oh, Count Orlok. I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Dracula (the source material), and in that book, the Count is loquacious, inquisitive, and very verbal, peppering the young man with questions about London and myriad other matters.

This movie’s Count Orlok, played by Bill Skarsgård (a surprise to me, I thought the Count was entirely a CGI creation) talks so slowly and ploddingly and sparingly, that if he were to replicate the written and implied dialogue from Dracula, the movie would have to be made into a four-season series. I suppose the Count looks the part from the book, more than the other various Nosferatus and Draculas, and thank goodness they don’t try to give him Gary Oldman’s hair from Coppola’s version.

Anyway, apart from Willem DaFoe’s scenes—gods, is he ever a watchable actor—there isn’t much to this Nosferatu. Terrified villagers, gothic castle, plague rats on a ship, Ellen’s histrionics, all of it very familiar and not essayed in any new or interesting ways, and everyone jabbering in sort of English accents, and maybe it’s best to turn off the sound and use the subtitles to make it a silent movie after all.