There are reportedly more than 100 films based on Bram Stoker’s seminal 1897 novel Dracula, and the most damning thing one can say about Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is that it is merely the latest one. Technically a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film of the same name — which itself was so infamous an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula that the Stoker estate sued the filmmakers and were almost successful in destroying every copy of the film — that was previously remade by Werner Herzog in the late ’70s, Eggers’ film will feel intimately familiar to all simply by the broad strokes of the plot permeating through cultural osmosis. Eggers’ primary contribution, then, beyond what has become his customary “muscular” approach to staging sequences that incorporate ornate, overly fussy blocking, is in foregrounding the sexual mania which has long been the subtext of the material. Although even in that there is a Johnny-come-lately quality to the film, as Francis Ford Coppola’s similar take on the material over 30 years ago already gave us a smoldering, sexy Count and an abundance of sex and nudity. Rarely has so much talent and energy been spent in service of something that’s felt so much like a foregone conclusion.
Although perhaps that’s ungenerous, as there is one adaptation choice being made by the film that pushes it in an unexpected, occasionally thrilling, direction. That would be telling the story primarily through the eyes of its main female character, Ellen Hutter (loosely inspired by Stoker’s creation, Mina Harker), played here by Lily-Rose Depp. Ellen is the first character we see in the film, calling out to an unnamed spirit in her bedroom which appears in the form of Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok (the film’s marketing has taken great pains to obscure the character’s appearance, so this review will be equally circumspect other than to say anyone expecting gaunt, bald, and rat-like front teeth will be rather surprised). The Ellen character, who has historically been written as virginal and pure of heart, is presented here as sexually adventurous (relative to the mores of the Romantic era setting, anyway), with Orlok coded as a bad boy ex who previously rocked her world and whom she just can’t quite get over. Some years later, Ellen is married to the polite yet boring solicitor Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), who in an all too telling bit of table-setting spurns her pleas to ravage her so he can run off to work. From there, the plot pieces fall into place like clockwork — and without deviation. Thomas’ employer, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney in a role analogous to Renfield), dispatches him to a remote land nestled in the Carpathian mountains where he is to call upon a mysterious count who wishes to purchase a home in their German seaside town. After many weeks’ travel (and disregarding the stern warnings of the Romani who live at the base of the Count’s castle), Thomas arrives at the imposing-looking home of Orlok. Upon signing the deed, Orlok demonstrates lustful feelings for Ellen and imprisons Thomas, feeding on him to build up the strength for the long journey to take his bride. Meanwhile, Ellen is afflicted with night terrors and somnambulism, which confounds the family friends she’s staying with (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin, both operating in the exact wrong register for a film this knowingly thirsty), requiring the counsel of the Van Helsing-like Professor von Franz (Willem Dafoe, giving the exact irascible performance you would expect from the casting).
Stoker’s novel is famously an epistolary with a decentralized narrative and no one dominant perspective, a structure which is somewhat preserved here; as with nearly every other adaptation, Thomas is sidelined for long stretches of the film as he attempts to make his way back to Ellen and recover from the injuries suffered at the hands of Orlok. That gives Eggers the space to expand upon the supporting players from the source material who were mostly elided by Murnau and Herzog: von Franz/Van Helsing is barely a character in the earlier films, while Taylor-Johnson’s Friedrich Harding is an invention of the film, getting a tragic subplot where Orlok rapidly decimates his entire family. None of these additions substantively improve the film and only add to Nosferatu’s distended second act where Orlok is literally at sea and Thomas clings to life. The sense of familiarity is enervating, as is Eggers’ decision to stage the majority of the film as a series of elaborate “one-ers” that begin as master shots, only for the camera to resituate itself half a dozen times without employing an edit, the action invariably arriving at symmetrical framing that places the focus on whatever is at the dead center of the frame. It’s superficially “impressive” the way photography in a coffee table book might be — the film seems to have been designed to flatter people who follow the “One Perfect Shot” social media account — but it makes for hermetic and (ironically) bloodless filmmaking. Eggers invariably lands on the sweatiest filmmaking choice imaginable, but rarely the correct one.
Speaking of “sweaty,” there’s also the film’s full-throated (phrasing!) embrace of the libido. Orlok is treated as the physical manifestation of Ellen’s sexual desires as well as her guilt over past “failings” of the flesh; she even shares a “shameful” story from her youth of being found nude in a field by her father and almost getting shipped off to a convent. The most frequently spoken refrain throughout the film is “he is coming,” often uttered in breathy moans by Depp as she convulses on her bed, her legs spread apart. And Orlok’s feeding is couched in the visual language of intercourse rather than imbibing, with Skarsgård regularly filmed in the nude as his body straddles and undulates over his prey (this is perhaps the first version of the character to hang dong). Eggers is also especially fond of framing Depp on all fours or shooting her in a prone position or staring up from a crotch-level point of view. None of this has been exactly absent from past adaptations, mind you, but it’s rarely been this overt. And as a raison d’être, it’s a pretty thin gruel, particularly when coupled with the film’s self-seriousness and complete absence of levity (especially dispiriting for those of us who primarily appreciated the black comedy in the filmmaker’s The Lighthouse). Yes, vampires have long been metaphors for sexual voraciousness and moral transgression; many of us picked up on this in the ninth grade.
There’s simply no faulting Depp though. The starlet and scion of Hollywood royalty understands exactly what the role demands and gives of herself freely. The latest in recent run of young actresses in horror films to channel Isabelle Adjani in Possession (although, ironically, not Adjani’s performance in Herzog’s Nosferatu), Depp gives an intensely committed, largely physical performance that requires her to contort her body like a gymnast, tear at her clothing, roll her eyes into the back of her head, speak in foreign tongues, and spend long stretches of the film in the throes of being violated by an unseen force. Giving Ellen agency in the film, both the original sin of willing Orlok into the world and treating her persistent consternation as a secret guilt she dare not share with her husband, as well as the canonical decision to treat the character as the means of the beast’s destruction — presented here as an overt act of seduction, with the Count too preoccupied slurping blood from her exposed chest to note the rising sun — is a smart choice by Eggers, rewarded by his leading lady’s almost feral screen presence. There’s a hunger and fearlessness (even in her wide-eyed terror) to Depp’s acting, which is otherwise absent elsewhere in the film. With everything in Nosferatu designed to within an inch of its life, Depp’s livewire performance at least lends a hint of actual danger and spontaneity to what is an otherwise very handsome but entirely moribund film.
DIRECTOR: Robert Eggers; CAST: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin; DISTRIBUTOR: Focus Features; IN THEATERS: December 25; RUNTIME: December 13
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