Nosferatu
Robert Eggers plays it safe in this underwhelming adaptation
There's no bite in this vampire flick.
As a young woman, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) prays to her window, hoping anything can alleviate her solitude. When a voice answers, asking her to pledge herself, body and soul, to it. She agrees.
Tell your kids not to promise disembodied voices anything, folks.
But the damage is done, and Ellen, unbeknownst to her, has just pledged herself to Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), a vampire. Because she’s blissfully unaware of that, she chalks her childhood promise up to a dream and marries Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult).
When her husband is called away to Romania to do a business deal with a mysterious man, Ellen worries. She begs Thomas not to go, to stay with her in Germany. But Thomas wants to make his fortune so he may care for his wife, so he leaves and promises Ellen he’ll return.
It turns out you should probably listen to your wife, because Hutter walks directly into the clutches of Orlok, who’s been scheming to bring himself and the plague to Germany, where he and Ellen can finally be together.
Can anyone stop the plague? Will Ellen save her soul? Why is this movie so drab?
Based on the movie that couldn’t get the rights to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu is the first dud in director Robert Eggers impressive filmography. For the first time in his career, Eggers penchant for meticulous historical research and careful cinematography fails him in a staid adaptation with nothing new to say.
There’s plenty in the story to work with. One could use the vampire as a metaphor for the sexual suppression of female desire. One could use the plague as a metaphor for mob rule and the demonization of foreigners. One could even make a treatise on classes and how money corrupts. But Eggers decided to play it straight with a pretty basic adaptation of the 1922 silent classic.
More disappointing than Eggers failing to do anything bold or new with the adaptation is the quality of the film. The CGI looks clunky. This is especially egregious considering that Francis Ford Coppola adapted Dracula, specifically using early Hollywood practical effects, and made a beautiful-looking film. If Eggers wanted to pay tribute to a silent classic, using practical effects and camera tricks would have been a great way to do so.
The styling for Orlok makes him look like Burt Reynolds on a bender. There are a few lovely shots, especially at the end, that feature some bold, interesting cinematography, but not enough to make the film as a whole anything but dull.
Nosferatu also suffers from its performances. Depp vacillates between dead-eyed staring and hysterics with very little room in between. Hoult is utterly lost with nothing to do as the pathetic Hutter. And I am going to start insisting that the horror community in general stops pretending that Skarsgård having long limbs is scary or an acting choice.
But if you live on the internet (and don’t we all today?), there have been some truly hilarious memes made from this movie. My suggestion to you would be to look up these memes and enjoy them. It will take less time than slogging through the movie.
Verdict: The memes are already better than the movie
Nosferatu is rated R and available in theaters December 25
