A Nosferatu directed by Robert Eggers just makes sense. Eggers seemed to effortlessly communicate his auteur flourishes of dread infused sights and sounds paired with a chilling, gothic atmosphere right off the bat with his debut feature The Witch, only strengthening his style with sophomore feature The Lighthouse and even carrying large elements of it forward with genre defying Viking epic The Northman. Pair that with Eggers’ basically lifelong desire to make an adaptation of Nosferatu, an obsession started by seeing F.W. Murnau’s silent classic on VHS age nine, this is about as perfect a director and source material pairing you could put together. I was so certain about exactly what I was going to get from Eggers’ Nosferatu as I sat in my perfectly positioned IMAX seat with definite excitement, but I didn’t feel a shred of intrigue. When the credits rolled I had got the formal excellence and dread soaked atmosphere I was wholly expecting, but for the first time I’d also had an incredible amount of fun with a Robert Eggers film.

I thought that last year’s Alien Romulus, aside from playing host to a lot of unoriginal narrative choices and cynical call backs, was the closest you could get to a film being a genuine rollercoaster. That film raced between expertly crafted set pieces with an immense momentum, which paired with the blockbuster craft created something truly immersive and subsequentially entertaining. If Romulus was a rollercoaster, Nosferatu is the aptly slow and creaky haunted house on the other side of the theme park. There is a memorable moment in the first act where the camera slowly pans around the entire 360-degree angle of a practical set as Hoult’s Thomas tries to escape Count Orlok’s castle. Seeing the camera move around this set on a giant IMAX screen provoked an immense thrill within me, I was Thomas and I was trying to escape. The slow pan around an entire moment is something Eggers has deployed multiple times in his career, as well as in this film, and it’s the immersion created by his muscular command of style here that makes his Nosferatu such fun. I was giddily drawn to the edge of my seat at the blocking of every painting like composition, every use of shadow and every single time the camera moved.

When speaking on the subject of style, it would be remiss of me to not mention Jarin Blaschke’s beautiful 35mm cinematography. In a year where a large amount of “colourful” studio films forgot the art of lighting and colour grading (looking at you Wicked), Nosferatu is a film shrouded in blacks, greys and blues that takes every opportunity to make the limited colour palette pop. Blaschke has explained in interviews that he used colour film stock when shooting to create the effect of a black and white film shot in colour, and it’s a gorgeous visual choice that especially makes the multiple monochromatic nighttime sequences shine with a blue tint, as if they were basked in a bright moonlight. There are also a substantial amount of all timer compositions, ones that feel destined to grace the hundreds of “best cinematography” reels that populate your Instagram feed. The whole internet is already head over heels for the backlit silhouette shot of Thomas approaching Orlok’s carriage through the woods, but to me the stand out composition came towards the end of the film with a snow covered static wide of Aaron Taylor Johnson slowly approaching a tomb. The way the barrelling snow intertwined with the film grain created an image that appeared timeless, as if it could have been plucked from a film from any point in film history. It takes truly incredible work for visuals to be so transportive. 

A creative command of craft is always a lot of fun for the audience, but the immersion created by the style here is being used for more than just a memorable atmosphere. This is a tale of multiple possessions. Orlok is blindly driven by his desire for Ellen, Thomas as well, and Ellen’s years of repressed desire have unfortunately led to her being completely at the will of Orlocks dark spell. Egger’s slow, immersive and dread filled atmosphere makes the frame feel foggy, like it’s covered in a thick and runny fear that puts you exactly in the headspace of everyone involved in Orloks ordeal. Atmosphere here is a vital stylistic attribute for immersing you in every questionable character decision which to me always elevates the horror genre. You’re not questioning why Hoult’s Thomas is descending further into Orloks castle because just as the characters are possessed by Orlok’s spell, you too are hypnotized by flawless filmmaking allowing for true escapism and immersion into what would otherwise be a fairly silly chain of events. I also think that my personal immersion in the whole affair is very much down to a spectacular ensemble cast doing spectacular work. Even Kraven himself Aaron Taylor Johnson, who has caught flack online for his performance here, brings a campy Victorian gentleman energy that doesn’t necessarily fit with what everyone else is doing but adds flavour nonetheless. Flavour is the key word for describing what this ensemble brings to the piece, a real vibrant tapestry of performances. There are three particular stand outs for me, Nicholas Hoult is continuing a remarkable run (Nosferatu, Juror No 2 and The Order) by being insanely good at looking terrified. Some of his facial expressions in Orlok’s castle are seared into my brain. To me Simon Mcburney (who I am relatively unfamiliar with) nearly steals the whole film. He does some nightmarish grins into camera in this, but his manic energy also brings a lot of the films uneasy laughs and highlights the genuinely terrifying lack of control that comes from being under Orlok’s spell adding genuine gravity to the film. 

This is the first version of Nosferatu that has truly got an emotional reaction out of me, and that is mostly down to Lily Rose Depp as Ellen. She is rightly getting praise for her mesmerising physicality in the possession scenes. The genuinely unsettling scene in which Orlok’s possession weaponizes a moment of intimacy between her and Thomas brings the house down with a packed audience – a lot of disbelieving gasps mostly due to what Depp does physically and how it all escalates. To me however, it’s the way she sells the inevitable tragedy of living in a time that represses her true nature and desire. Even in scenes that aren’t inherently scary, she has a tremble in her voice and fear in her eye, obviously to showcase Orlok’s presence but to me these ever-present expressions painted the more unsettling and affecting picture of a young woman trapped in the deep restrictions of an extremely misogynistic time. As the film was drawing towards it’s final frames and the volume was lowering, the image of Ellen dying wrapped up in Orlok’s arms will sit with me for a long time. Depps expressionless glance towards camera is tragic for the narrative itself, Ellen was always going to have to sacrifice herself to stop Orlok, but to me this singular glance stood as a powerful reminder of the tragedy that comes with any sort of repression. This tragic glance to the audience was the moment that Eggers version truly justified itself for me, by becoming more thematically and emotionally relevant by telling the tale through the character of Ellen.