Producers: Jeff Robinov, John Graham, Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus, Robert Eggers Director: Robert Eggers Screenplay: Robert Eggers Cast: Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson and Simon McBurney Distributor: Focus Features
Grade: C
As a visual exercise, Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” is a wondrous thing, with a production design (Craig Lathrop), costumes (Linda Muir) and cinematography (Jarin Blaschke) that give every image the feel of a haunting dark fable; the contrast with the look of Werner Herzog’s far plainer 1979 version of the story is striking. As a horror film about vampires or a homage to its predecessors, though, it’s pretty much a bust that audiences will find it difficult not to giggle at. Of course, perhaps that was the writer-director’s intention, if the stilted dialogue and over-the-top performances are anything to go by. One hopes so, though even then it can’t hold a candle to Roman Polanski’s witty “The Fearless Vampire Killers.”
The movie shares its title with F.W. Murnau’s classic and Herzog’s staid but imaginative reimagining, but it’s actually a hybrid, following Henrik Galeen’s 1922 script in the basics but adding a good deal of new material, much of it drawn from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” (which, of course, the original’s makers were sued for pilfering at the time, resulting in Murnau’s film being withdrawn from circulation and nearly lost). But Eggers provides additional tweaks of his own, most notably an explanation for why the vampire emerges when he does and why his intentions are so specific.
As with Galeen-Murnau, the film is mostly set in the fictional coastal town of Wisburg, Germany, in the late 1830s. A stiff Nicholas Hoult (who played Dracula’s long-suffering assistant Renfield in last year’s eponymous Nicolas Cage misfire) returns to bloodsucker territory as Thomas Hutter, a young clerk assigned by his boss Herr Knock (wildly over-the-top Simon McBurney) to travel to the Carpathian mountains. There he’s to secure the signature of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to a deed of sale whereby the nobleman will take title to a dilapidated mansion in Wisburg. The place just happens to be situated right across the street from the humbler home where Hutter lives with his new, devoted bride Ellen (pretty but vapid Lily-Rose Depp), whom he installs with his friend Friedrich Harding (uptight Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (bland Emma Corrin) before departing, since she suffers from fits that seem inexplicable, though Eggers will provide an explanation for them.
Hutter’s trip is hard but relatively uneventful until he reaches an inn near Orlok’s castle. There he’s warned about vampires, and before proceeding he encounters a nocturnal exhumation ritual intended to ward off the undead—another of Eggers’ additions. When, after a spectral carriage ride, he reaches the castle, he’s welcomed by Orlok, who as embodied by Skarsgård is far from the ghostly, emaciated figure so memorably played for Murnau by Max Schreck (and for Herzog by Klaus Kinski). He’s a burly, mustachioed Cossack with a booming voice and long fingernails, and skin that, when glimpsed, appears to be disintegrating; Skarsgård pretty much disappears into the makeup and furry costumes without registering the ghoulish menace of his predecessors.
In Castle Orlok Hutter is introduced to the grisly reality of the count’s macabre existence, and after enduring his menacing fangs himself, escapes and makes his way back to Wisburg. Meanwhile Orlok has gotten there as well, via a sea voyage on a ship that carries death and destruction along with him and his coffin. Its arrival brings plague to Wisburg, leading Hutter to enlist disgraced Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe, who amuses himself more than he does us with an abundance of mannerisms), a specialist in the occult, to destroy the count and his minion Klock while the skeptical Harding, the owner of the cursed ship, and Von Franz’s former student Dr. Siever (dull Ralph Ineson) look on incredulously. But as in Murnau, it’s Ellen who destroys Orlok, though Eggers provides a much more psychologically convoluted rationale behind her actions.
In many visual as well as narrative respects, Eggers takes his cue from Murnau; the initial conversation between Hutter and Knock, for example, is very nearly a copy, and at the close he seizes on the movement of Orlok’s shadow just as Murnau had so effectively done. But otherwise he diverges from the model. On his return to Wisburg Hutter is an active participant in the pursuit of the count, as opposed to the feeble invalid he is in Murnau and Herzog, and the role of Von Franz is vastly expanded, though he isn’t made into the knowledgeable vampire specialist of the Hollywood/Hammer Van Helsing. Eggers also plays a clever trick with a sequence in which Hutter and Von Franz destroy Orlok’s coffin.
As might be expected, he also takes advantage of the enormous advances in effects that have been achieved over the past century, and the audience’s capacity—even demand—for gruesome shocks. Klock’s appetite goes far beyond flies now, and when Orlok expires you can be certain it’s not in a simple puff of smoke. Whether you consider this an improvement will be a matter of taste, but visual effects supervisor Angela Barson and David White, who designed the prosthetic and makeup effects, have certainly done their jobs impressively. The sumptuous images confected by Eggers and his team are enhanced by Damian Volpe’s eerie sound design and an eclectic score by Robin Carolan that varies from symphonic romanticism to dissonant riffs to fit the different moods, while editor Louise Ford relishes both the deliberate pacing of most of the movie and the energy of the occasional action scenes.
This newest “Nosferatu” can be admired for its exquisite look, but as narrative it comes across more as a slightly absurd period pageant than a genuinely frightening take on a horror classic.