Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Film Review: Nosferatu (2024)


The wholehearted dedication that director Robert Eggers provided to gothic horror during the making of Nosferatu is mind-blowing. This director, who has so far been somewhat of a mixed bag for me - The Lighthouse, for example, was a thoroughly unenjoyable experience - went above and beyond to do justice to its source material. In this case, this is not the Bram Stoker novel, but its unauthorized German adaptation from 1922, called Nosferatu.

The film, today iconic for its visuals but unknown to many, did slight adjustments to the story of Count Dracula and Eggers decided to focus on that rendition completely. Besides that, he also stayed true to the dramatic and often tragic concepts of gothic horror and romanticism in general, providing a script that must have been read in a very odd and offbeat way. Finally, Eggers managed to mix into that a lot of pan-Slavic, pagan-rooted notions and rituals, focusing on Eastern Romania and the region of Transylvania. For the making of the film, this brilliant director even found inspiration in art like the Yugoslav TV movie The She-Butterfly, an obscure work of Balkan filmmaking.

The cast fully embraced this brilliant script. Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, and Nicholas Hoult are top-notch in their lead roles, while Willem Dafoe is simply mesmerizing in every scene he appears as the wise and learned Albin Eberhart von Franz (Van Helsing, in the original tale). Throughout the film, breathtaking cinematography follows the storyline to the heartbeat, even with its drastic changes in scenery and settings, covering castles from high mountains, strange ships on high seas, and beautiful salons from high German society. Even the ending, which will disappoint many who are looking for regular vampire horror tropes, is a tiny masterpiece in its own right.

Many stated for some time that Robert Eggers is one of the leading film directors of his generation. I can honestly say that I didn’t fully see things the same way for a long time, despite many hints and glimmers of that greatness. Then, I watched Nosferatu and so should you.