Nosferatu (2024) Robert Eggers and a triumphant undead Gothic Horror

“You awakened me from an eternity of darkness”

“Nosferatu” (2024) Directed by Robert Eggers. Picture courtesy of and with thanks to www.comingsoon.net

On a September night in the long ago year of 2022 I had the very great if twisted pleasure of introducing myself to the Hammer House of Horrors residing inside the mind of American filmmaker Robert Eggers and his then second film, The Lighthouse, a dark, brooding, intensely loud and difficult to watch psychological horror of one man’s nightmares and dreams and of another man’s abuse of power and control. Quite frankly it’s horribly brilliant and I was hooked the minute our two wretched souls (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) washed ashore on an island in the eye of a storm and their elongated stare direct to camera: of one man eager to continue with his life’s calling and the other, already lost at sea, beaten down, and seemingly at the end of his tether or on the brink of death.

Possibly both.

Which is of no relevance to Nosferatu here or indeed almost exactly a month ago when I finally had a gap in my film watching schedule to return to the 17th Century and the casting out of a family into the wilderness of the new world and into the clutches of The Witch in Eggers’ debut film, a review of which I concluded with the following:

“So there you have the beginning and final frame of Robert Eggers’ “The Witch”. In the 80+ minutes in between you’ll find a family disintegrating under the weight of grief and loss, familial as well as their religious faith too as they battle with deceit and truth, God and Satan, and particularly the overbearing weight of the carrying of sins as an ever building sense of appalling dread fills the air until, with 30 minutes to go, it explodes in an “Exorcist” like fury and never, ever relents in a final half an hour I can only compare to the horror filled ending to Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List”. If I added the unbearable sense of impending dread and supernatural horror contained within The Overlook Hotel and “The Shining”, well that would mean “The Witch” keeps very exalted company indeed.

I’ve held a lifelong fascination for debut films and “The Witch” is up there with the very, very best”.

---

---

Whilst Eggers 2022 film The Northman leaves me cold and even, dare I say it, a little bored, Nosferatu sees a rising master of Gothic horror back on top form. Here are the opening 11 minutes:

Accompanying the black and white almost monochromatic opening credits are what appear to be the faint stirrings of a music box and the ticking of a clock before with a fade to black we hear the very noticeable sounds of someone haunted and in the middle of a nightmare. We cut immediately to a close-up of “Ellen Hutter” (Lily-Rose Depp) and with her hands clasped in prayer she appears to be at first glance sitting as though in a raised position in bed but as the camera withdraws slightly from her, and as she urges aloud for a “Guardian Angel” and a “Spirit of Comfort” to “Come To Me”, the widening camera angle sees Ellen slowly walking from one room to another and towards an open window, the curtain billowing in the wind. A change in camera angle shows the curtain blowing inward with a shape of a large figure noticeable and “You wakened me from an eternity of darkness” as Ellen stands opposite, upright, and almost levitating from the floor as the deeply ominous voice continues “You…You…You are not for the living” and “You are not for human kind”.

We cut outside to a wide angled shot of a huge, imposing gothic building with Ellen barely visible walking along a path. The voice continues “And shall you be one with me eternally. Do you swear it?”. Cut to a close-up of Ellen as she declares “I swear” and immediately a horrific clash of discordant sounds and images, of Ellen appearing to strangle herself before a horrifying figure takes over and now Ellen, convulsing violently on the floor amid jagged and discordant sounds and the camera moving slowly downward and below earth level and…

“NOSFERATU”

“Years Later” and a close-up once more of Ellen, slowly and gently waking from a dream and yet crying out for her husband “Thomas Rutter” (Nicholas Hoult) and immediately talking of “dreams”. Thomas, full of smiles for his new wife reassures her “there’s nothing to be scared of”. Ellen laments that their honeymoon had been far too short, urging her husband to kick off his shoes and join her once more in bed but work calls and with a parting kiss, Thomas departs the bedroom, leaving Ellen to lament aloud to herself “He has the position already” and, portentously, “They’ll send him away”. Hurrying from the house, Thomas joins the busy streets of “Germany, 1838” and eventually his appointment at “Knock & Assoc Estate Agents” as demonstrated in a full screen zoom close-up. An initial frosty welcome is soon softened by “Herr Knock” (Simon McBurney) who whilst acknowledging his new charge is late has also taken the time to arrange the accounts and prepare the title deeds for a wealthy client who will pay well, and for a “new husband requires new wages” for a wife he describes as beautiful as well as a “nonpareil” and a “sylph”. Housebound, their newest client requires the title deeds delivered to him in his remote and secluded mountainside retreat and although a six week journey by horse, Knock enthuses with gusto “it’ll be a great adventure, my boy!” as well as assuring Thomas that his position in the company will be guaranteed on successful completion of the deal. A loud rumble of thunder and the pouring of rain outside signals the end of their appointment.

We cut to a close-up of Ellen holding a bunch of dead or dying purple flowers, downcast and lost in thought as her husband relays the news of his impending departure. “You cannot leave” she implores him, and “I must tell you of my dream” before through firstly smiles Ellen describes her dream was that of their recent wedding day but rather than waiting for Thomas to arrive it was in fact a black cloaked figure of “death”. Whilst everyone in the congregation around her was dead, she “held hands with death” as crying now, she collapses sobbing into Thomas’ arms. A loud rumble of thunder is as evident as Thomas’ inability to comprehend his wife’s dream as Ellen, still sobbing, continues:

“It portends something awful for us. You mustn’t leave”.

So there you have the opening 11 minutes of Nosferatu and rest assured you have a two hour gothic horror story still to come and one which through the haze of a January flu I loved immensely and a love that only grew exponentially recently here in February and if I didn’t admire The Witch and particularly The Lighthouse so much, I’d classify this as my favourite Robert Eggers film to date. Throughout Nosferatu I had a feeling of the Hammer House of Horror television series of my youth and late Sunday nights illicitly watching a programme far beyond my then tender years, of a well dressed businessman entering the twilight zone of a gypsy camp and the inhabitants portentous urgings of him not to awaken the beast that hovers over their existence before a sacrificial offering of a virgin by torchlight and the meeting of a dark “Lord” cloaked in shadow and death and a ruinous castle full of grisly nightmares. Here the film really comes into its own and juxtapositions abound: of a weary traveller, sick and under the spell and control of a wraith-like figure cleverly seen from a distance, followed around his ruinous home and then barely seen at all as Eggers’ camera and direction wants and needs his vampire to come in and out of frame, save his thin, spindly fingers, or still cloaked in shadow and only partially lit by candlelight, and of a new wife desperate for the return of her husband but yet falling under her own spell, her own invited possession by a devil and now committed, unable to escape.

From here you still have 90 minutes of a film to truly marvel at. Often appearing black and white with a dirty yellow coloured hue, the film is actually in colour but brilliantly and deceptively so and Jarin Blaschke fully deserving of his Oscar nomination this year for his cinematography, one of four such nods together with Linda Muir (Costume Design), Craig Lathrop (Production Design) and David White, Traci Loader and Suzanne Stokes-Munton (Makeup and Hairstyling). All six nominees in the four categories above are also shortlisted for the BAFTAs this coming Sunday (16th February) together with Robin Carolan for his original music score and whilst there is seemingly very little in the way of recognition for Eggers’ direction or the stars in front of his lens, Lily-Rose Depp is outstanding in just her twelfth all time big screen outing and a long, long way from her introduction to the movies in Kevin Smith’s ridiculous Tusk and Yoga Hosers a decade ago! Nicholas Hoult’s star continues to shine and from X-Men and Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite in 2018 he’s since starred in the flawed The Menu in 2022, last year’s Juror #2 through to this year and “Lex Luthor” in the eagerly awaited Superman reboot. Kudos to Bill Skarsgård for the pun intended undertaking of the titular role of Nosferatu and whose star is also on a stratospheric rise following stand-out starring roles in John Wick Chapter 4 and particularly last year’s The Crow reboot, two of my favourite actors Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson both return to an Eggers film on stellar form and last but by no means least, both Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Simon McBurney clearly had far, far too much fun with their respective roles and the film was all the better for it!

Legend and Lore suggests you have to invite the vampire across your personal threshold and into your life and whilst I don’t particularly suggest you doing so, I’d certainly highly recommend Robert Eggers Nosferatu to you.

---

Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.

Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.

All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:

(Author’s Collection)

"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon

"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon

"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon

---