Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

The story of Dracula has long been used by filmmakers to tell stories about their time and place.

German director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 “Nosferatu,” an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, alluded to the Spanish flu through rats and mention of an unidentified plague. Francis Ford Coppola, in 1992’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” drew upon the AIDS epidemic for inspiration with descriptions of an invasion of the national bloodstream.

There don’t seem to be allegorical trappings with Robert Eggers’ new version of “Nosferatu.” Although there could be a COVID-19 pandemic-related interpretation of the film, it’s mostly an opportunity for the director to relay some of the same themes and ideas he’s covered across his career.

In a letter to members of the Critics Choice Awards voting body, Eggers described his history with “Nosferatu” — he’s been thinking about the film since he watched it when he was nine years old. His end result is a movie hellbent on not messing up. Strict devotion to the original work and time period create an experience that’s less thematically rich than other Dracula works or Eggers films. But Eggers still crafts an unnerving experience about how humans will repress their own desires to “live deliciously,” as the goat, or Satanic Black Phillip, said at the end of Eggers’ “The Witch.”

Like the conclusion of “The Witch”, “Nosferatu” starts out with a woman, Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), summoning spirits to find any form of love. But, unlike in the final scene of “The Witch,” Ellen’s encounter with the spirit of Orlok (an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård) is unpleasant and leads to a maleficent connection between the two.

From there, the movie follows the same beats as any Dracula story. In 1830s Germany, a young, up-and-coming real estate agent, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) travels to Transylvania to meet with a vampiric count about buying a home, like in Murnau’s version.

Once Thomas realizes the horrors that happen at night, he remains trapped in the castle while the vampire heads to Germany to spread terror. Meanwhile, a Van Helsing-esque figure, Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), gathers a group of men to help Ellen with her Orlok-induced seizures and defeat the vampire.

Eggers goes through the motions with “Nosferatu.” And if you’ve watched the Murnau film, Tod Browning’s 1931 “Dracula” or know any lore about vampires, you’re not going to be shocked that sunlight and stakes to the heart are the only ways to defeat Orlok.

Accuracy is Eggers’ focus, with the 5,000 live rats on set, Orlok’s castle and period-specific dialogue. Craig Lathrop’s elegant production designs create a world that looks maniacal and stunning, but adds little thematically. At some point, Eggers’ emphasis on accuracy becomes just a way to show off instead of enriching the story.

Even as Eggers stated in his letter to the Critics Choice voting body that “Nosferatu” was his most personal film, this new version of the Dracula story can feel awfully impersonal even in some of its most recognizable moments. None of the moments that appear in previous “Nosferatu” movies, such as Orlok haunting Thomas or scenes of plague-infested streets, feel unique.

At times, the film wrestles with the Stoker source material and Eggers’ style, never finding a proper balance between the two like Eggers’ previous films have.

That being said, Eggers does take some creative liberties with the original text. For one, Ellen’s psychological connection to Count Orlok is much more established. But with the vampire separated from her for the majority of the runtime, Ellen is at the whims of doctors who see her seizures and sleepwalking as untreatable. At one point, when Ellen says, “He is coming to me,” – referring to Orlok – a doctor (Ralph Ineson) simply doses her with ether.

In both “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” Eggers explores how characters, particularly women, navigate extreme patriarchal systems. In “The Witch,” teenage girl Thomasin indulges and embraces evil spirits as a way to escape her Puritan family’s strict customs, while “The Lighthouse” features two men expressing their latent homoerotic desires as they reveal secrets about themselves.

Depp’s performance continues this thread, as she uses her physicality to show the restrictive and strained nature of 1830s Germany. Her every movement and word is careful, as the men simply brush her aside, even when she’s saying the literal embodiment of death is coming to their town.

Whenever Orlok possesses Ellen, she understands that the vampire is evil and an angel of death, but also a guilty pleasure for her. As Von Franz examines Ellen, we see how men have power over women’s bodies. These close-ups of Von Franz and Ellen continue a horror trend from 2024, where the genre had films like “The First Omen,” “Immaculate” and “The Girl With the Needle” focusing on women’s body autonomy.

Eggers uses these period pieces to understand the present. Does his “Nosferatu” belong in the pantheon of profound horror works like the films of Murnau, Browning or Coppola? No. But it does continue the young auteur’s streak of using horror to understand the stories and issues that lie underneath society across history.

Published on January 2, 2025 at 10:06 pm

Contact Henry: henrywobrien1123@gmail.com