Review: Nosferatu (2024) (Patreon)

“I’ve seen things that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!”

Robert Eggers’ remake of a silent movie is, ironically, his most dialogue-heavy work. Nosferatu luxuriates in the spoken word even more than The Lighthouse or The Northman. The plot is sparked by three words:

“Come to me.”

Young Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) seduces darkness itself, desperate for any companionship in her lonely life as a Victorian woman. She winds up summoning the other horniest and loneliest creature in the world. Like every lonely young girl desperate to get laid, Ellen immediately finds the worst lover of her life.

Her lover, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), is, however, more paradoxical than most of our first boyfriends. Like most of the more compelling versions of Dracula, Orlok is a million contradictory metaphors wrapped into a visually arresting package. Is he pestilence? Is he rape? Is he sexual liberation? Is he the horror of ethnic diversity? Nosferatu suggests all of these readings, but shies away from identifying Orlok as any one force. When he appears, the film becomes washed out, verging on black and white, like the character himself is exsanguinating the movie. Orlok is unbound by spacetime or identity; he manages to avoid clearly appearing on camera until the end of the movie. Ellen doesn’t merely fuck him to death; she destroys him with the power of light and color. The dawn of cinema destroys Dracula. Is that self-indulgent? Of course not. Just watch the fucking movie.