And we’re threading the needle now. After The Northman, Robert Eggers learned how to appeal to mass audiences while embracing his wonderful weirdness that The Witch/Lighthouse fans want him to embrace more of. The end result is this 2024 remake of Nosferatu. And if this is what we’ll get everytime a Robert Eggers movie arrives, sign me up, over and over again. I’m a believer now, Bobby! You win, I submit to your brilliance!
It’s 1838 in Germany. A poor woman named Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) wishes for some sort of connection to someone. Unfortunately, an evil spirit answers the call before she has a chance to meet Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), whom she will fall in love with. The two marry; right after the honeymoon, Thomas is sent to sell a property to the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) from Romania. Thomas departs, but not without reservation from Ellen, who senses dark things in this mysterious Orlok while she stays with her best friend Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) and Anna’s husband Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) until Thomas returns.
The first half of Nosferatu is pure dark magic. In the script it might just be 2 pages, saying “Thomas visits Transylvania, meets some gypsies, and arrives at Count Orlok’s castle”. But what happens from that simple part of the screenplay is why Robert Eggers is so beloved among movie fans. The scenes with the gypsies are wonderful harbingers of dread for our poor Thomas, as we feel like he’s descending into some sort of hell no decent person should ever end up in. After Nicholas Hoult leaves and awaits the carriage is Jarin Blaschke’s submission for best cinematography to the Oscars, this horrifying still, eerie night on an empty snowy street with a carriage approaching. It’s so many things at once, your mouth and eyes can’t help but to open at what you’re witnessing. Nicholas Hoult nails his big job: look more and more horrified as he gets closer and closer to Bill Skarsgard’s count. We feel every ounce of fear Eggers wants us to feel as that part of the story reaches its big conclusion and we turn our attention to Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen.
There’s no way Nosferatu could ever reach the heights of that incredible first hour, so Eggers does the best he can to wrap up the movie as satisfyingly as possible in the next 60/70 minutes. He settles on day time/night time beats, where Willem Dafoe is making us uneasily chuckle with his theories and plans he helps the Hutters/Hardings try to lay, bringing the terror and tension back down. Only to slowly ratchet it up again as the sun goes down, where we’re in for some omen that’s gonna make us all squirm, with the amount of rats we see on the streets at least. Lily-Rose Depp does a great physical job here, actually doing her own convulsing in a way that fits Eggers story, the much more modern version of Nosferatu. At its best this second act can feel a bit like 1830s Exorcist, with everyone trying to figure out what is happening with poor Ellen. Eggers makes sure you’re locked with something incredible he puts on the screen, leading to the non Standards and Practices more unhinged ending he wants the movie to really have that everyone is giving their all for.
So Merry Christmas everyone! As we remember, with Christmas comes the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year. And in that darkness, Robert Eggers rises, awash in his nocturnal vision and creativity, ready to scare and awe in equal measure. Also, gypsy parties look crazy dude! Naked people, sacrifices, general mockery of frumpy outsiders. Were I not a frumpy outsider, I’d like to be the non-sacrificial invite once, please?