It feels like almost all the vampire movies in recent years have been only using their content to push gore or faux fang sales whenever Halloween rolls around.
I wholeheartedly feel that most modern vampire characters and storylines don’t have the same flair as their literature counterparts.
However, the remake of “Nosferatu” takes audiences back to the basics of gothic horror where vampires cut their teeth so to speak.
Nosferatu is dark, unsettling and full of intense details with a layered storyline that’s only a smidge off-center from being a direct remake based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The movie is an American gothic horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers.
It is a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film Nosferatu, itself inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.
The film stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, and Willem Dafoe.
The flick is 132 minutes long and rated R for bloody violent content, graphic nudity, and some sexual content.
In the early 1800s, a young Ellen (Depp) pleads for the arrival of a supernatural being.
Her cries awaken a mysterious creature who makes her pledge herself to him eternally.
Years later, in the winter of 1838, Ellen, now married, lives in the town of Wisborg, Germany, with her husband Thomas Hutter (Hoult).
To ensure financial security for the couple, Thomas accepts a commission from his employer Herr Knock (McBurney) to sell the decrepit home Schloss Grünewald to the reclusive Count Orlok (Skarsgård).
Ellen unsuccessfully begs Thomas to remain with her, as she is haunted by dreams of marrying Death himself and is disturbed by the pleasure it gives her.
Thomas leaves her in the care of his wealthy friend Friedrich Harding (Johnson), his pregnant wife Anna (Corrin), and their young daughters.
Arriving in Transylvania’s Carpathian Mountains, Thomas is shunned by the local peasantry for associating with Orlok.
That night, he witnesses (while ambiguously dreaming) their impaling an alleged vampire’s corpse with a stake; the corpse jolts and vomits blood.
The following morning, Thomas finds the village deserted.
Exhausted from his journey, Thomas meets with the menacing Orlok in his castle and completes the property sale.
Orlok angrily rebukes Thomas’s inquiries about the villagers, and when Thomas cuts himself, Thomas blacks out.
He awakens to find bite marks on his chest.
Orlok insists on the increasingly weary and ailing Thomas remaining there, steals his locket containing Ellen’s hair, and coerces him to sign a document written in occult script.
Thomas later finds Orlok sleeping in a coffin and attempts to stake him, but Orlok awakens and feeds on Thomas, before chasing him with wolves.
Thomas escapes and is nursed back to health by Orthodox nuns at a nearby church, before rushing back to Ellen.
Meanwhile, Orlok sails for Wisborg with plague-infested rats, killing the ship’s crew along the way.
In Wisborg, Ellen suffers from bouts of sleepwalking and seizures, which her doctor, Wilhelm Sievers (Ineson) struggles to treat.
As her condition worsens, Sievers consults his mentor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Dafoe) - a scientist ostracized for his occult beliefs.
Von Franz believes that Ellen is under the spell of the Nosferatu, a demonic, plague-bearing vampire. Elsewhere, Knock is institutionalized after killing and eating sheep raw.
From there, things turn bleak and it looks like Wisborg is done for, however, Orlok underestimates Ellen when she’s pushed to desperation.
Overall, this film is best served on the big screen and in our chilly local theater – it almost feels like you’re there watching the story unfold in a much more intimate setting.
