Top 15 Movies of 2024: No. 13 - Nosferatu

13. Nosferatu, dir. Robert Eggers 

I wrote a history of vampires in film two years ago, with a focus on Dracula. I'll admit some bias here. Nosferatu, in case you do not know, is a serial-numbers-filed-off version of Dracula, with the same characters and events. The retitle was just an unsuccessful attempt to evade copyright, which even a century ago was often an enemy of artistic expression. We get a New-sferatu every fifty years or so, and you can see a lot of influence across the century here. The original 1922 film is not a movie I enjoy. However, the 1979 version from Werner Herzog is magnificent. Robert Eggs is taking a lot of influence from the centuries of Dracula material to choose from. Isabelle Adjani’s take on heroine shares a lot in common with the 2024 version played by Lily-Rose Depp. One can even feel Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stroker's Dracula in the Eggers version. There's a wild archness to the performances and the intense sexual connection between its vampire and his female victim/lover. 

Is Nosferatu (2024) this the greatest version of Nosferacula to put to screen? No, Eggers did not make the definitive Bram Stoker movie, Coppola still holds that crown. But Eggers made a really good about an undead eastern noble traveling across Europe to bring death and depravity to the West. There's always room for more movies about that content.

The imaginary of the vampire is as iconic as any film monster. The definitive Dracula, the one you see in the emojis on your phone, is Bela Lugosi. Nosferatu is nearly as iconic, the bald creepy rat-man who would go on to appear in the original adaptation of Salem’s Lot and more importantly, Spongebob Squarepants, that great nexus of 21^st century culture. Eggers went with an entirely different monster. That silhouette at first looks like the Max Schreck, then you see the man in person, and it is a different kind of vampire entirely.

This Dracula – I mean, excuse me, this Orlok, is one that fits the more closely with the Stoker novel. He’s got a mustache, a big pointed nose, and the custom of an Eastern European tyrant. We see the Count nude several times and beneath the big coat, there is a half-rotten corpse, with a back covered in sores and decay. Bill Skarsgård takes his voice down to its deepest register and alternates between a snarling accent and wheezing breaths. It is very unpleasant. You can only imagine what this guy smells like. And yet, this Count, lacking all the style of Lugosi or even the charms of his rodent predecessor, has this compelling tragic connection with Ellen Hutter (Depp). He’s both violation and titillation, exactly the appeal of this monster, but with a new take on it.

And yeah, the mustache adds a lot. I'll fight you over the mustache.

Eggers has a very theatrical method to his films, every actor is going big with their deliveries but often big in different ways. The Lighthouse is a lot of fun because Willem Dafoe is doing cartoon Pirate Captain while Robert Pattinson’s New England accent approaches a Kennedy impression. Dafoe in Nosferatu is a cackling freak - his character is a Van Helsing rift but no longer representing modernity, rather a joyous return to magic and mysticism. Lily-Rose Depp is alternating between strong heroine and madwoman. If the protagonist is this big, it forces this film’s version of Renfield, Herr Knock (Simon McBerney) to become ever more grotesque and monstrous. Not every performance works. Nicholas Hoult as the straight-man Hutter can play off the ham and cheese around him, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson cannot. He seems out of place in every scene, like a high school kid struggling to recite Shakespeare. There's a very specific energy you need to bring to play Eggers, and Taylor-Johnson does not have it. That actor aside, if you just want to see a cast go for it while surrounded by gorgeous Muppets Christmas Carol-esque sets, Nosferatu (2024) is your movie.

Every version of Nosferatu has this unique twist on the Dracula formula wherein the heroine, Mina/Ellen/Lucy, is not saved as she is in the novel and most film adaptations. This woman must be the lure that finally kills the creature, the virginal feminine sacrifice that saves the world. This is made tragic here in the Eggers version by the addition of Ellen being the one who summons Orlok. This director has been trying to make Nosferatu since The VVitch helped start the whole "elevated horror" movement in 2015, and I believe this was the hook Eggers wanted to bring for a decade now. Orlok represents the one escape from stifling heteronormative 19^th century rules and rationality. All through the film nobody really listens to Ellen or her needs besides Dafoe’s character, himself only a few degrees less wacky than the main villain. The final act of this Nosferatu is a woman out of time, out of culture, having never found a place in her world dying for its sin. Nosferatu is one of the rare Christmas vampire movies, and hmm, there's a sacred feminine Christ metaphor here.