Nosferatu (2024): A Review

 

NOSFERATU (2024)

Atmosphere can go a long way. When it comes to the second remake of Nosferatu, atmosphere is all it has. Somewhere trying to claw its way out, Nosferatu is a film with great visual ambition but not much else.

In 1838 Germany young Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), newly married to the beautiful Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), is sent to far-off Transylvania to finalize a major deal with the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard). Orlok is wealthy but causes the local people and the Gypsies to live in terror of him. It is not a surprised, as he is a vampire. There is a connection between Orlok and Ellen, and despite Thomas' efforts he struggles to get back to his beloved.

Ellen, watched over by family friends Fredrich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin), now has strange visions and dreams, sleepwalking and growing more obsessed with how "he is coming". Also obsessed is Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), Thomas' employer who has gone mad due to Orlok's evil power. Orlok comes to Germany, bringing the plague to the area. Only eccentric scientist and occultist Professor von Franz (Willem Dafoe) is able to understand Orlok's power and danger. Orlok, now in Germany, enacts a terrible price on the Harding family to show his power. Will Ellen be able to sacrifice herself to save her world? Will Orlok be triumphant over his enemies?

There is a major problem in Nosferatu that made it difficult if not impossible to recommend. Writer/director Robert Eggers decided that Nosferatu needed to be "atmospheric" by having greys and sepias dominate the film. Unfortunately, the end result made things almost impossible for me to literally see. So much of Nosferatu is so opaque that it devolved into something of a guessing game as to what was going on. Granted, it was not completely impossible to see. However, the lines from a Bob Dylan song came to mind.

"It's getting dark, too dark to see", and that was a major problem. I can give a little leeway and say that maybe the print that I saw was hard to see. However, that I do not believe was the case. I think Nosferatu was trying too hard to be gothic that it made it sometimes impossible to make out what was on the screen.

The few things that I could see did not make me like it more. I figure that audiences know that this is all fiction. However, I still find it highly tawdry to see children killed, even if in shadow and in a supernatural setting. Something about that just hits me hard, hard enough to not want to keep going even in something like Nosferatu. To be fair, I do not remember if this was an element in the two previous versions. If so, I have forgotten or perhaps found that it was not as overt as it was here.

I found the acting overall if not theatrical at least deliberately mannered. Everyone was rather grand in the film, which curiously robbed the film of what great suspense that it could have had. I do think well of McBurney's Herr Knock, who starts out sane and ends up biting off the head of pigeons and goes all-in on the cray-cray. I think it was a deliberate decision of Eggers to hide Bill Skarsgard for nearly the entirety of Nosferatu. I give Skarsgard credit for using his voice and body to create this menacing figure. It is a pity again that we saw so little of him.

What I could make out of the production design and costuming in Nosferatu was appropriate to shape this gothic world. The cinematography though made things remarkably, dare I say excessively opaque.

Nosferatu could have been better. I think it is being overpraised, especially since I could not see much of it. I do not know if it will rank with either the silent original or the German-language remake. I might see Nosferatu again, if I could find a print that was not so dark.

DECISION: D-