In a year where bodily autonomy has never been more politicized and weaponized, movies have consumed our living nightmare and interrogated those fears through the prism of the horror genre with vicious clarity. Shocking depictions of childbirth, female image, and nonconsensual sexual encounters were commonplace and effective in 2024–Cuckoo brought Hunter Schafer into the crossfires of reproductive cyclical control, The Substance eviscerated the notion of beauty standards for women and the objectification of self-image, even The First Omen and Alien: Romulus featured invasive acts of reproduction.
While at first glance Nosferatu may not exist in the same conversation, Robert Eggers holds nothing back in the precise implementation of his craft for deeper-rooted thematic intentions within a well-worn story. Of any contemporary filmmaker whose storytelling portfolio and inner mental machinations align with the thematic devilry of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), you’d be hard-pressed to make a case stronger than his. Nosferatu is a compendium of his past projects–he has trapped us in the claustrophobic grasp of Puritan-era occultism in The Witch (2015), delivered us into the delirium of homoerotic isolation in The Lighthouse (2019), and punished us with the unfiltered rage of revenge in The Northman (2022). Now, with Nosferatu, he asks us to succumb to the darkness of vampirism–a fertile territory for exploring desire in a setting rife with sexual suppression.
It’s an ask that we are overwhelmingly eager to fulfill given the long-percolating realization of the passion project that Eggers has been hoping to deliver his entire career. With rumors swirling of starts and stops over the past ten years, it is also undeniable that the trials and tribulations of his three feature projects navigating from independent to studio features have informed his latest output.
Beginning with the air of a gothic parable, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), a young real estate clerk, is dispatched to the foreboding land of Transylvania to finalize a deal with the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). The journey unfolds like a fever dream: vast, snow-scaped landscapes drenched in eerie moonlight, a carriage that glides as if untethered from earthly constraints, and a castle that seems to pulse with a sinister thousand-year-old heartbeat.
These early beats of worldbuilding ground us in a setting where reality bends under the weight of ancient curses and unspoken desires, setting the stage for the harrowing descent to come. Orlok himself emerges slowly–first, a deep-throated voice cloaked in shadow, then a grim decomposing chassis of death. By withholding a full reveal of Orlok until later in the film, Eggers allows the character’s voice and presence to dominate, cultivating an air of mystery and dread in his first meeting with Thomas–compounded by Hoult’s convincing fear that his life hangs in the balance. The prosthetics and practical effects render Orlok disturbingly human, amplifying his grotesque allure without crossing into caricature. This is no mere homage to the silent era’s vampire; it is a phantasmagoria of flesh and spirit, sound and shadow.
Eggers’ devotion to historical authenticity is unparalleled, and his meticulous research permeates every decision he makes (even that mustache). This rigor reaches new heights in his fourth feature, blending the hallmarks of German Expressionism with a distinctly contemporary sensibility. The bluish moonlit hues evoke the monochromatic palette of early cinema, crafting a spectral atmosphere that comes alive in the storytelling relationship between shadow and light.
The deliberate, almost tactile camera movements echo the mechanical rigidity of early cinema, grounding the film in its historical lineage while imbuing it with modern energy. The result is an endless supply of painterly tableaux, where every frame is a museum-worthy still. By marrying the haunting visual lexicon of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 rendition with a contemporary sense of storytelling, the fantastical narrative is reframed in the conditions of its present reality that stimulates the subtitle “A Symphony of Horror” with renewed dread. This dread compounds the fears of Nosferatu–it’s not just sickness and death, it’s not even the touch of the Devil himself, it’s the fear that we may want it.
For all of Eggers’ attention to historical detail and reference to previous adaptations, the film’s major distinction is recentering the thematic core on Ellen, brought to life by Lily-Rose Depp in a performance of astonishing physicality. The script reimagines Ellen as the emotional centerpiece of the story, her desires, impulses, and affections driving the narrative through her subconscious connection to Orlok. The character is steeped with layers of suppressed yearning, understood only by Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe) who affords her the agency to act on her fate if she so chooses.
The connection between Ellen and the doctor, a quasi-omniscient narrator, mirrors Eggers’ relationship with his material. Von Franz acknowledges Ellen’s agency and complexity, drawing out her suppressed desires and framing them within a world of occult and mystical understanding. Their interplay reflects the film’s essential scene as a theater for our most nefarious impulses where perversion and seduction collide in a spellbinding psychosexual encounter. Orlok asserts to her, “You are my affliction,” with such potency it satiates the most feral roots of our subconscious senses.
Ultimately, Nosferatu is a collision of Eggers’ thematic obsessions–psychological madness, suppressed desire, and historical verisimilitude–that thrives on the instinctual shifts he enacts through the act of adaptation. Despite the long legacy of its titular vampire that has laid its shadow across literary and cinematic history for over 100 years, no filmmaker has dared to broach the simultaneous eroticism of desire and death with such ferocity. This balance is epitomized in the film’s climax, where Ellen’s passions and defiance converge in a final tableau that redefines her role within the vampire mythos.
Here, in a carnal theater of shadow and light, as we are swept into the gravitational pull of death, human longing and female agency find themselves more fiercely alive than ever.
Review Courtesy of Danny Jarabek
Feature Image Credit to Focus Features