review: nosferatu

​Out for the Count: Nosferatu

The themes of reanimation are hard to ignore in Robert Eggers' latest. Of course, there’s the undead nature of the monster itself, added to which the project itself is a remake of a remake of a remake of the original Dracula story. A (cough) revamp, if you will (though you probably won’t). 

Taking on Dracula is to operate under the weight of the mythos. Bram Stoker’s novel was published in 1897, and its grip on the human imagination means that we’ve had countless iterations since then. 

1922’s Nosferatu, a classic  of the German Expressionism movement, was essentially an unlicensed adaptation for German audiences. Changing a few minor details didn’t dissuade the Stoker estate from suing, and all copies should have been destroyed, the ruling coming too late to prevent its distribution. Since then we’ve had everything from the classic 1930s Bela Lugosi to Gary Oldman’s creepy Count in Copolla’s 1992 version. Twilight, Blade and Sesame Street’s Count Von Count show Dracula’s panoramic reach.

Eggers (The VVitch, The Lighthouse) makes the canny choice to take the material, and shape it using his strengths. These would be, among other things, obsessive attention to historical detail, a fascination with esoteric folklore and an evocation of dark atmospherics that is among the best in modern cinema. 

Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlock (‘Nosferatu’ is an archaic Romanian word for  ‘vampire’) is a necrotic, zombie-like creature with a mustache you could lose a small nutria in. He swings between weakly cadaverous and bounding towards us with the gait of a rutting grizzly bear. In his own worlds, he is not a mortal object. “I am appetite!” he growls, placing him beyond reasoning, and beyond mercy. 

He has become fixated on Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), luridly projecting himself into her dreams before pursuing her through his business dealings with her effete husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult). Ellen’s visions and seizures are equal parts seduction and repulsion, increasing in intensity as Orlock ships himself from Romania to take up residence in her home town. Depp does an incredible job swinging from sexual mania to nihilistic melancholy.  

Orlock is a one-man apocalypse, bringing pestilence, plague and infant death. He is parasite and strongman, terrible yet irresistible. Ellen’s condition reflects a physical darkness across the town, one that must be battled. Local doctor Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson) enlists eccentric metaphysician and occult scientist Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (played with obvious relish by Willem Defoe), and once Orlock’s nature is beyond doubt, they wage war as best they can. 

Given the sheer scale of a century and a half of world building, Eggers’ take is even more impressive. Chilling psychological drama keeps the inevitable levels of camp in check, and the grotesque form of the Count - as opposed to a Brylcreemed, cape-flapping caricature - create a vampire that is stirringly novel, yet remains a sincere homage to both the original source material and the pioneering 1922 adaptation. Old horrors in new forms. It’s truly a monster for our times. (PO)