Nosferatu (2024)  

Review: written March 2025

Breathtaking, but not heart stopping

This remake of the silent classic story, which transposes the Dracula story to 1830’s Germany, does an admirable job of both honouring and living up to its predecessor. Director Robert Eggers has clearly filled every frame with respect and admiration for what came before, while still being able to go further in terms of story and fleshing out (if you’ll forgive the expression) of characters.

In 1830’s in the German town of Wittburg, a young man (Nicholas Hoult playing Thomas Hutter) and his new bride Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) are parted, when he is sent to a remote Transylvanian castle to complete a real estate transaction with the mysterious Count Orlok. Once there, of course, he discovers that Orlok might want a lot more from him than his skills as a solicitor selling him the home. His initially optimistic disposition about the effect the trip will have on his career and ability to provide for his family, lead to an altogether more powerful feeling of dread. From sanguine to desanguination, you might say. Meanwhile, Lisa, suffering from a relapse into somnambulism and evidently having one foot in the supernatural realm, is tormented and clearly has some link to the Count. When the Count then travels to Wittburg, he brings death, plague, and a lot of rats – as well as an intense drive to come face to face with Ellen.

The original was known for its expressionist design and its striking visuals. This one, amazingly, is just as memorable for its Gothic design and mood, and some truly stunning visuals courtesy of cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, with whom the director has worked on his previous features. But it’s more than that which elevates the movie – the acting, particularly by Depp, is exactly what is needed, and the score is doing a lot of the work in creating a truly unsettling mood, and a story which works as well now as it did then.

I imagine not everyone will warm to this – it is the very opposite of warm, it is bleak and the colour is so drained from the image it might as well be in black and white at times. Being of the Gothic horror ilk, it has some pretty theatrical dialogue at times, making Willem Defoes character in particular seem arguably a bit hammy. And yet, while it was never truly horrific as a modern horror version, and never thrilling, the sense of foreboding, unease and tragedy are what remained with me. It is the reining in of excess, the firm hand on the storytelling, and the reverence for the material that made me admire this movie. It sits as an interesting companion piece to Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula.. focussing as it does on the heightened style and on the characters longing for a woman and not just on blood. But whereas Coppola was happy to go full colour and full throttle, Eggers takes a different more elegiac approach.

If it’s a full blooded horror or thriller you yearn for, you may be left wanting, but if you are willing to go where the film leads you down some dark roads of desire, of both pure romantic and the corrupt kinds, then this movie full of foreboding and unease will be just what you need. And you can Count on that.