Nosferatu (2024) – Review

Quick thoughts – Grade – B+ – Nosferatu (2024) is a dark and foreboding addition to the lore of Count Orlock.

After an solid year for horror sequels (Terrifier 3, Smile 2), remakes (Speak No Evil), and prequels (A Quiet Place: Day One, Alien Romulus, The First Omen), it’s fun knowing that the Nosferatu remake will help 2024 horror cinema go out with a bang. On top of being a good year for horror sequels/remakes/prequels, it’s been a great year for vampire cinema with Abigail and Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person offering some beautiful new characters and moments to the vampire genre (think the onion bit from Abigail and the “Emotions” moment in Humanist Vampire).

What’s interesting about this latest Nosferatu film is that it pretty much sticks to the classic lore of Dracula/Nosferatu. The Nosferatu/Dracula story focuses on real estate deals, obsessive love, and a count named Orlock who wears cozy coats and drinks copious blood. Eggers’ iteration is familiar for anyone who has watched Dracula or Nosferatu, but the familiarity isn’t a bad thing because it allows the viewer to follow a familiar road while marveling in beautifully macabre sights and sounds. A nice wrinkle to this iteration of the wealthy vampire is that Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgård) is just straight evil and terrifying. There is nothing sensual about Skarsgård’s performance, instead he wheezes, adopts a gnarly voice, and goes to places that he never wants to go again. On top of putting himself into a depraved headspace for months, he worked with an opera singer to lower his voice, and while on set he practiced Mongolian throat-singing to make his voice even more menacing. Actors have always pushed themselves to extremes while working for Eggers, and it’s fun watching the sweat-drenched performances from Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Ineson and Emma Corrin.

Much like The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman, Nosferatu is a visual delight that features inspired camerawork from Jarin Blaschke (The Witch, Knock at the Cabin) who clearly enjoys trying to match the visual grandeur of the Francis Ford Coppola directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It would spoil the ending, but I can say that this film features the best overhead shot of 2024, and shooting with 35mm Kodak 500T film was an inspired choice. I also like how the 1.66 aspect ratio allows for some excellent ensemble staging and I kept saying “wow” as scenes  unfolded because of the staging choices. The production design is unsurprisingly excellent too, as another Eggers regular Craig Lathrop was able to use almost 10 years worth of collaborating with Eggers to create some memorable sets in Prague soundstages. Eggers was originally supposed to direct Nosferatu after finishing The Witch, and Lathrop admits that it’s a good thing that the production was delayed several years because it gave the crew time to grow as artists, individuals, and as a team. Lathrop built about 60 sets to create the German town of Wisborg (it’s a fictional city) on the Baltic coast and Orlok’s Transylvanian castle. Lathrop didn’t want anything to feel like a set and he succeeded in creating a rich world of filthy castles, winding streets, and homes built with red brick. 

The 2024 iteration is very faithful to the 1922 original directed by F.W. Murnau. However, the 1992 version is only 81 minutes, whereas Eggers’ movie is 132 minutes (Wener Herzog’s 1979 remake is 107 minutes). This means that while the basic story blueprint is upheld, there’s a lot more meat to this story. The extra minutes help give more agency to the character of Ellen Hutter (Depp), who becomes more of a central figure in defeating Orlock. Instead of being a human blood bag. This version of Hutter calls the shots and has agency throughout the entire film, which is a change of pace from the 1922 version which saw Hutter becoming the heroine during the final act.

It’s fun seeing Willem Dafoe back in another Egger’s film and his time around he doesn’t have to fart dozens of times (I love The Lighthouse). After earning an Oscar nomination for playing a vampire playing Count Orlock in Shadow of the Vampire, it’s neat seeing him back in the Nosferatu world. Also, between Juror #2, The Order, and Nosferatu, Nicholas Hoult is having a brilliant 2024 and he does some of the best paranoid sweating of the year as the out-of-his-league Thomas Hutter. Rounding out the cast are Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Ineson, and Simon McBurney, who all get the opportunity to be drenched in blood or look horrified as an ancient sorcerer haunts them. 

Final thoughts – You know the story, but the latest Nosferatu is a visual delight that features top notch performances, production design, cinematography and direction.