Perhaps if it had come out in 1970, it would have been a revelation, but I can’t stop myself from asking why Robert Eggers, a relatively young, supposedly talented director, chose to make this film, retreading more than a century old ground, mining rather than creating.
Nosferatu isn’t a bad film. From a technical perspective, the set design, costumes, cinematography, and special effects are all exceedingly well done to the point where one might think they can smell the rats and the sewage seeping out of the mid-19th century German streets. The staging and the acting are also worthy of a $50 million film helmed by a critic’s darling of a director, Robert Eggers, and driven by a cast of upcoming and established talent. There are a handful of scenes sprinkled throughout its almost 135 minute running time that are equal parts arresting and disturbing, and even the less than stellar sequences do not count as an embarrassment by any means. At the same time, I couldn’t stop from myself more than once, precisely why Mr. Eggers would choose to make a film that’s been done dozens of times before, that covers a story everyone already knows, but seems to pretend the audience isn’t familiar with Dracula in particular or vampires in general? Putting this another way, had Nosferatu been released in 1970, it might well have been a revelation, but by 2024, the entire effort can’t help but be weighed down by a sense of simply going through the motions, of applying artistry, skill, time, and money to what’s already been done to death many times before, a story like its titular antagonist that simply won’t die. Whether it’s Jonathan Harker in the original Bram Stoker or Thomas Hutter in the 1922 silent version of the film, everyone knows that either Count Dracula or Count Orlock isn’t moving to either London or Wisburg for the scenery or the fresh air. Forget actually meeting the Count in question, once they arrive in Transylvania and observe the locals acting suspiciously, whispering about the Count himself, the darkness, the evil, or whatever, and practicing strange customs around it, we are well aware they are correct in their fears and the protagonist incorrect for dismissing them as superstitious rubes. We also know the story can’t possibly end there and whatever happens, the monster will make his way to his final destination and wreak havoc both en route and upon his arrival. Undoubtedly, this havoc will be misinterpreted at first. There will be a scene where someone insists that whatever affliction plagues either Mina Harker or Ellen Hutter has to have a rational explanation and someone either Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz or Van Helsing will insist otherwise, only to be proven tragically right. After this revelation occurs, the protagonists will necessarily march on Dracula or Orlock’s new home in a desperate attempt to thwart the evil menace, an attempt they themselves think might fail.
For his rendition, Mr. Eggers chose to recover all this ground with a combination of deadly earnestness and at times inexplicably sluggish pacing. While fans of the film will undoubtedly refer to this as necessarily moody and atmospheric, the movie might set a record for the number of shots of Mr. Hutter hiking to Transylvania, marching or stumbling through the woods, tentatively approaching the castle, wandering around the castle, and more. interspersed with jump cuts to someone waking up from either a dream, a nightmare, or real life. As a result, it takes more than an hour of screentime for what are essentially five highly predictable scenes that can best be described as an amalgamation of the same sequences from earlier movies. At points, these are done better than they have in the past, but there is no doubt that they have been done in the past, over and over again to varying levels of success. Mr. Hutter departs to meet the Count, encounters some villagers terrified of said Count, meets the Count himself, gets terrorized by the Count, and escapes the Count. (On a bizarre side note, was Mr. Hutter not supposed to realize the Count had claws instead of hands and looked like an all-round monster from a costume ball?) From there, the Count departs to Wisburg onboard a boat, which we know is doomed because an entire movie was devoted to it recently (The Last Voyage of the Demeter), but which thankfully Mr. Eggers doesn’t devote too much screen time to beyond a few shots that are sadly rendered non sequiturs because they appear to exist only to tell the audience that the Count is indeed killing everyone on board. In other words, he kills people we don’t know or care about simply to set up what should be one of the more interesting aspects of the adaptation, the arrival of the boat in Wisburg, but bizarrely, he doesn’t actually show that. Instead of watching the doomed vessel crash into the dock in a storm, releasing the Count and thousands of screeching rats, we learn about it through Mr. Hutter’s friend, Friedrich Harding, when he is told that a boat carrying the plague has run aground. While the shot of him discovering the vessel on the dock with the rats scurrying everywhere was reasonably effective, the plague plotline, which is actually somewhat new and interesting, offering at least the potential to approach the story from a different angle, serves only as a backdrop from there, a means to cause chaos and confusion in the background to make the sets more crowded rather than actually influence events. Personally, I found myself wondering how much better it might have been to start the movie with the shipping crashing into the dock and unleashing the plague, transforming it into a mystery as people keep dying by means which can’t be explained in medical terms.
Otherwise, the only new idea Mr. Eggers introduces is an existing link between the Count and Mrs. Hutter. Rather than discovering the Mina Harker character as a result of his dealings with her husband, the film opens with her having a lurid if not brutal sexual encounter with an invisible creature, and we learn that she has suffered from “melancholy” since she was a young woman, prone to the equivalent of epileptic fits, visions, and sleepwalking. This does two things. First, it necessitates a dizzying variety of shots of Mrs. Hutter in fits and spasms, so many one wonders if they had a chiropractor on set and many of which end with the trope of her waking up in a panic, over and over again. I can only assume he does this to make the audience wonder if this is real or a dream, when we know it’s real because of the title of the film alone. Second, it sets up a twist to the ending wherein the Count can only be killed if the heroine sacrifices herself to him at dawn. Instead of the traditional stake through the heart or lopping off the head, this Nosferatu is an immortal evil unless a woman gives himself to her willingly and keeps him from his grave until the first cock crows. In principle, this should have heightened the tension of the climax and served as a surprise for the audience, but in practice, the outcome was telegraphed way too far in advance and the entire idea seemed tacked on from some other story. Before the climax itself begins, Professor Eberhart and the audience discover the secret in an old tome which inexplicably appears when needed, a classic pilot device especially as it occurred shortly after he claims he has no idea how to defeat the monster. He informs Mrs. Nutter about the sacrifice, but decides to trick her husband into believing they can kill the beast in its lair, which also happens to inform the audience as well. The pair along with another individual set out towards the lair itself, spend a total of about five minutes finding the coffin, and open it to discover the Count is not inside in a moment that shocks no one except for Mr. Nutter. Instead, the Renfield equivalent is lying there for whatever reason, raving that he’s been tricked by the Count. They kill him in nothing short of two seconds, but at this point, Mr. Nutter realizes the Count is after his wife and sure enough, the scene cuts to the monster’s arrival at their home, where Mrs. Nutter welcomes him of her own free will.
Somehow, this is happening in the dead of night, but they have sex until dawn, the Count apparently so enraptured by his undead heart’s desire that he doesn’t bother to check the time even knowing it will be his undoing. Equally mysterious is why it takes the professor and Mr. Nutter until shortly after dawn to reach the house, only to discover the pair dead in bed too late to do anything about. Beyond the obvious plot devices and holes at play combined with Mr. Eggers uncanny ability to squeeze the life out of any potential surprises or shocks, the entire sequence makes little sense in the context of the story. Immediately relevant to the scene: Mrs. Hutter is intentionally tricking the Count to kill him. Why does that constitute accepting him of her own free will when she isn’t? Yes, she gives herself to him, but out of deceit, not desire. On a broader level, what prompted her original encounter with the Count to begin with? From the way Nosferatu is described by the professor, we understand him to be a kind of regional, spiritual plague that feeds on life. It’s hinted that there are more than one of these creatures, each with their own haunts and domains, and clearly, Orlock was in Transylvania for hundreds of years while Mrs. Hutter has never been there to our knowledge. Did he meet the future Mrs. Hutter on a summer vacation or something? Nowhere is it mentioned how their connection was established or what it even is. Given this is a new addition to the vampire mythos and an addition that’s essential to the telling of this version, one might think it deserved some kind of explanation, but instead it’s merely another device to set up an ending that might have been tragic and cathartic in other circumstances. For admittedly different reasons, there’s the same sense of simply going through the motions, believing fancy sets and high quality cinematography can solve fundamental problems with pacing and story telling. While it might technically be new and therefore could’ve been interesting, the decision to reveal the means to kill the monster in advance along with the plan to trick Mr. Nutter, repeated the problems with the entire enterprise. Once again, we know what is going to happen and watch it unfold in excruciating slowness. One wonders how much better it might have been with a little creativity in the story telling; where the audience is not aware that the professor and Mrs. Nutter have a secret plan in mind that will result in her sacrifice, allowing us to discover the truth along with her husband, realizing the heroine must die for others to live.
Alas, that was not to be, bringing me back to the original question: Why did Mr. Egger choose to make this film, retreading more than a century old ground, and supposedly he’d wanted to do so for almost a decade as some kind of passion project? Lest you think I am picking on Mr. Egger, this is a baffling problem that plagues Hollywood in general. Instead of creators, the industry is increasingly the equivalent of miners. Rather than looking for gold, silver, or other minerals, they seek existing intellectual property and exploit it, from the Barbenheimer craze of 2023 to the latest remake of a remake of a comic book. Beyond wondering how supposed artists can so limit themselves creatively when great directors had generally been known for pushing and redefining boundaries instead of recycling them, what does this say about their opinion of the audience? Do they truly believe the public is clamoring to see what they have already done dozens of times before with modern spit and polish? The critics, at least, seem to think so, giving Nosferatu an 84% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes, claiming “Marvelously orchestrated by director Robert Eggers, Nosferatu is a behemoth of a horror film that is equal parts repulsive and seductive.” Me? Not so much.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 