Nosferatu (2024) - Style over Substance

Robert Eggers' Nosferatu (2024) was top of my radar for horror to catch around the new year. The trailers showed a movie dripping with dark atmosphere and promising a tale of dangerous obsession. Whilst the film certainly delivers on atmosphere, the tale itself is somewhat lacking.

The premise of Nosferatu is based off the silent movie from 1922, following a handful of other remakes, taking heavy inspiration from the original Dracula story. Whilst a timeless classic, it unfortunately means that if you're familiar with the story, this is a familiar retread of the story beats. This could work, particularly with a star-studded cast, and especially if there was an interesting take on the story or characters.

But before diving into that, it is worth talking about the positives. This film is beautiful. The camera work compliments the elaborate sets, particularly Orlock's great, gothic castle, to build a twisting, unsettling feeling. It's a treat to get lost in the claustrophobia of Wisburg and the sprawling Transylvania mountains. The use of so many elaborate and practical sets is a breath of fresh air and brings the setting to life.

Eggers employs an almost monochrome colour palette to add to this; not quite an homage to the original's black and white, rather, because it's "romanticsm, not expressionism." (And, apparently, there wasn't the budget.) The desaturation does bring out the gothic mood, making what little colour there is, particularly the orange and reds of fire, pop.

The wardrobe has been given the same care and craft. The gowns and suits are gorgeous and period accurate; bringing the time period to life and creating the kind of striking images reminiscent of the novel.

So, yes, the movie looks wonderful and the detail is painstackingly historically accurate.

But is this really enough?

Because the plot is nothing new. In fact, it feels by-the-numbers. Hoult makes a good young-man-trapped-with-a-vampire (a role he's delivered on a few times), Dafoe a great, zany Van Helsing character, and Skarsgård a wonderfully creepy count. And yet, though everyone is clearly enjoying their roles, there is nothing particularly stand out in the take. In fact, what stands out most is why only the count has an eastern-european accent, whilst everyone else is speaking crisp RP British.

Since the original movie has since been discussed as anti-semetic, Eggers' take does little to counteract this. The design of the count has a moustache slapped on, but is otherwise not particularly changed. (I have nothing against the moustache, by the way, the moustache is interesting, at least.) The lack of fangs for sharpened teeth seen more rarely in vampire horror, but doesn't quite live up to the gnarliness of the bites akin to something like Raw (2016). It still feels like there was a lot further they could have gone, if they were aiming for living corpse.

However, I can understand this is an adaptation, and as such, there's a give and take in how recognisably Orlok they'd want their villain to be.

I'd actually probably have still enjoyed this as a solid vampire flick, if not for the elephant in the room: Lily-Rose Depp.

Whilst I'm sure the posession scenes were taxinga nd difficult to film, Depp's performance feels like the one person everyone said was "really good" in your school drama classes, because they can shout a lot and pretend to cry passably. Depp relies on melodrama for the character of Ellen, and unfortunately, it makes it hard to like this her. And no, female characters don't have to be likeable, but it's clear this film wants you to be on Ellen's side, yet does nothing to make you be - and the performance certainly doesn't help. As it stands, I don't buy her and Thomas' marriage, and don't hugely blame the Harding's for turning her out. This happens after at least twelve weeks (Thomas says the journey to the count's castle takes six weeks, and it presumably takes him longer to get back) of dealing with screaming and night terrors and posessions in return for what? Who is Ellen when she is not posessed? She doesn't seem a good friend to Anna (Emma Corin,whose performance is great), and doesn't seem to have any real character outside of delivering forboding lines.

Therefore, I don't think the problem lies solely with Depp. The script just hasn't given Ellen enough of a character to make her interesting. We don't have enough of her backstory to feel sympathy, we don't see enough of her outside of posession to want her free, we don't even have enough of her and Thomas' marriage to want to see them stay together. It feels like this is down to a reluctance to do anything too different from the original, leaving just a couple of nuggets of what could have been an interesting theme:

Nosferatu pokes its head into a theme of sexuality. Seen most obviously through Ellen's movements whilst posessed, though this isn't hugely explored. Other characters don't really acknowledge on it (aside from a period-typical hysteria reference), which seems like a missed oppportunity to explore the attitudes of the time. This is touched open in a later scene between Thomas and Ellen, but at a service level, "I'm not clean," as opposed to exploring anything with depth or challenging this.

If this is meant to be an exploration of desire, why does everything feel so desireless? I can see the grinding bodies, but I can't see the emotion. As Ellen shouts "show him our love," I'm wondering what love we're meant to be seeing?

To conclude, Nosferatu is a gorgeously shot classic vampire movie, but its focus on historical sets and accuracy is to the detriment of doing anything interesting or fresh with its set-up. It's wonderful it was such a passion project for the cast and crew, but if I'm recommending a subversive vampire horror starring Nicholas Hoult, it will be Renfield (2023).