Written and directed by Robert Eggers
Repression, shame, bloodlust, regular lust, enduring love, and mortal fear was gothic horror’s purview and it’s been a minute since we last enjoyed the real deal, but now the wait is over, as Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is here, dripping from every orifice.
Emerging from an impenetrable darkness, it’s a keen revamp of an ancient story that leans further into sexual shame than its predecessors, as Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen, a girl long tormented by nighttime visions of a foul presence she can only describe as death, the recurrence of these visions vexing both in their horror, but also the pleasure she admits to feeling.
Those visions ceased once she met Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), a sincere man who loves her deeply. Now married, like any good husband, he wants to provide, and to make his fortune, he travels far away to broker a real estate deal with a recluse count. Turns out the count’s ambitions do not revolve around real estate, but rather Ellen, who has the most mysterious hold on him. Death and desire abound.
Robert Eggers lowers you down a deep, dark well with Nosferatu, a nightmare fairytale he brings to life with both detail and technical know-how, trapping you inside its walls that inch closer and grow tall above your head. Wherever you turn your head, there Eggers is, poised and ready to spook.
It’s a triumph in worldbuilding, but also in the claustrophobia Eggers introduces, true to the gothic horror ethos. Eggers chains you to his bedeviled characters, either giving you their POV or staying within an inch of their terrified faces, making us as blind as them, prey to what lurks in the shadows. Expect eerie silences, startled jumps, and some heart-clutching.
The trappings and the treatment makes Nosferatu as fine a take on the genre as it gets, replete with grizzly death and burning lust, and Lily-Rose Depp is the wick Eggers lights it up with. While her line readings are not what stand out, the physical performance she puts on is something else, ranging from a wispy cloud when Ellen’s in repose to a thunder clap when Ellen’s nighttime demons descend, cracking and twisting her body like lightning.
Nosferatu is gruesome most of the time, and you’ll look in vain for the romance and sensuality that sometimes sneaks into films like this. Hoult and Depp were not bonded for such things, with Depp’s gloomy sexuality purposefully grating against Hoult’s earnest and soft boy scout. What stirs the loins of Nosferatu is the monstrous and bewildering, but clear as day is the black diamond of a genre outing that is Eggers’ film.
Mikkel Frederiksen 