Nosferatu: A Dark and Twisted Tale
Nosferatu tells the story of Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) and her husband Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and their entanglement with a strange ancient creature Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgard) The film follows both of the couple equally, while Thomas has been given a job to sell an estate to an eccentric Transylvanian lord ( Count Orlock ) Ellen grapples with a pact she made with Orlock when she was but a child, and the harrowing effects it has on her. I’m keeping the summary vague because I think this is a film worth experiencing for yourself. We get both the perspective of Thomas trying to survive in a vampires castle, and Ellen dealing with visions and seizures from the horrible creature.
I have always been a big fan of Eggers's work, I was expecting Nosferatu to be no different, what I wasn’t expecting however, was just how much I was going to love this film.
Nosferatu is the most visually stunning of all of his work, Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke has worked with Eggers on all 4 of his major pictures ( The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman & Nosferatu) and it’s clear the two have developed a strong connection to a single vision. I could drone on about the gorgeous wide shots or the beautiful use of symmetrical compositions that Eggers has used, but the number one thing that made this movie so stunning was its use of darkness. In a movie like Nosferatu that takes place either at night, or in dark dingy castles, it’s difficult to balance the audience seeing the action and setting the tone correctly. The film at times feels black and white with how well the colors are balanced ( something not unusual for Eggers given the Lighthouse is ) and the film never compromises its darkness to allow the audience to see clearly, nor does it force the audience to squint.
On this Blaschke said: “What you see with your eye doesn’t look the same when you try to capture it on film. You have to expose the film at a certain ratio for it to react in a certain way but that is not the same way you react to it in real life. In the moonlit scenes, for example, there is very little color information. I had to observe how my own brain and eyes saw things in a low-light situation.” So much of the beautiful darkness used is thanks to the fantastic costume design and authentic sets created for the film, it’s clear it wasn’t just Blaschke who contributed to the film’s dark atmosphere.
I had never seen the 1922 Nosferatu and I’m not particularly engaged with vampire media and lore as a whole, so the story of Nosferatu was very fresh to me. There weren’t any major twists or turns to completely shock the audience, and I’d hesitate to call this a horror film at times truly, but the story was very simple to follow and hit a number of great emotional and dramatic beats. I don’t think its simplicity holds it back however, as the tale of Orlock & Helen is a complicated one that already people have been debating online, and the true ‘Curse of Nosferatu’ is a very interesting idea. While this film was a showstopper from both a visual and acting sense, the story kept me engaged for its entire runtime.
Speaking of the acting, these were to date the best performances given in an Eggers film. He’s always managed to bring out the best of his lead performers, but Nosferatu was on another level for me. Hoult & Depp are the clear standouts with Depp putting on a masterclass of emotion and distress and Hoult playing the nervous bumbling but loving husband. Everyone in the film however gives exactly what is needed of them, my personal favourite performance was from Ralph Inneson who plays the rational and logic-driven Dr. Wilhelm Sievers who, even in the face of the supernatural is ever the skeptic. Inneson delivers a really earnest and period-accurate performance as the ‘modern’ doctor of the times. Anna & Friedrich Harding ( Emma Corrin & Aaron Taylor-Johnson) with smaller roles as the friends of the Hutters deliver great performances, while Thomas is away Friedrich and Anna must grapple with their friend’s madness and talk of demons. Finally, Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafooe) delivers just the madness & wisdom we should expect from Willem Dafoe in a tophat. Overall the performances are one of the strongest parts of the film as a whole.
There is plenty of personal bias involved with my love of Nosferatu, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think its a genuinely fantastic gothic horror piece and one of the most stunning and well-acted films I’ve seen in a while. With rumors abound of what Eggers's next project is going to be, don’t miss out on seeing his current best, and give Nosferatu a try.
