By David Dent
Robert Eggers’s movies may be divisive, but there’s no denying his ability to create an immersive and claustrophobic atmosphere. Nosferatu is set in a Mitteleuropa (actually filmed in the Czech Republic) which conjures up memories of past ‘faux’ historic environments created by Burton, del Toro and, most recently, Yorgos Lanthimos in his 2024 movie Poor Things.
It’s a splendid backdrop for the story of Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), summoned by his employer Knock (Simon McBurney) to visit Transylvania to negotiate the sale of a run-down house in Wisborg, which just happens to be next door to Hutter’s. The client is Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), an ancient, desiccated nobleman, gravelly of voice (and then some) but possessed with immense strength.
While Orlok’s reasons for leaving his home sod – with all the arduous coffin/soil accoutrements required for the journey – seem a little imprecise, they move sharply into focus when the Count sees a cameo of Hutter’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp, outstanding in this), and sets his sights on her.
Orlok’s possession of Hutter, and later Ellen, is the dark heart of the story. Much as in Werner Herzog’s reimagining of the story, 1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre, the Count represents a wider, more pervasive evil (synonymous with the plague which he brings to Visborg via his coffin delivering ship), but in Eggers’s movie Ellen moves to centre stage, her own troubled history suggesting that she’s as much summoning the vampire as being stalked by him. This struggle reaches almost impossibly physical heights, with Depp completely immersing herself in the role in a way I haven’t seen since Jennifer Carpenter in 2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
It’s a bit of a shame that the languorous approach of previous adaptations of the story have been put aside in favour of short scenes and sharp edits. There’s so much to look at in Nosferatu that one regrets its almost blink-and-you’ll-miss-it approach to scene setting. This isn’t to say that Eggers isn’t in total control of his material; this is two and a quarter hours of filmmaking that flies by, helped enormously by Robert Carolan’s rich and powerful soundtrack.
Cast wise, Hoult is little more than adequate here and Friederich and Emma Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin), the two charges into whose hands Ellen is delivered while Hutter is away, seem positively insipid. Elsewhere Eggers regulars Willem Dafoe (in the movie’s ‘Van Helsing’ role as Professor von Frantz) and Ralph Ineson (Dr. Wilhelm Sievers) provide local colour and some of the fruitier lines of dialogue. But this is really Depp and Skarsgård’s movie; it’s almost a shame to see this as perhaps a remake nobody asked for, but the pairing of Ellen and Orlok, and the whole created world in which they exist, make it well worth the visit.
Nosferatu is showing now in UK cinemas.
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