When Robert Eggers announced he was reimagining Nosferatu, I was ecstatic.
Eggers has been tremendously successful in taking old-school, period horror stories, like The Witch or The Lighthouse, and making them feel alive. He’s a master at using period detail and expert craftsmanship to foster creeping dread, which is why he’s the perfect filmmaker to bring Nosferatu back from the grave. Granted, the original 1922 silent film directed by F. W. Murnau still holds up as a fantastic horror film, as his use of shadows amongst his creaking, musty sets paired fantastically with Max Schreck’s ghoulish performance as Count Orlok. Eggers understood Murnau’s style and built on those same techniques, capturing darkness in his film. Eggers’s production is, of course, a massive upgrade, and the bevy of strong performances like Bill Skarsgård near-inhuman performance as Count Orlok, Willem Dafoe’s wild alchemist Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, and Lily Rose-Depp’s breathtaking Ellen Harker. Both Nosferatu films are fantastic, but I’m interested in diving into how Eggers’ version builds on the original film, both stylistically and thematically:
1) Use of Shadow
Murnau’s Nosferatu was known for its creeping mood and set design, two elements that Eggers is perfect at capturing in all his films. As Eggers’ Nosferatu contains the beautiful period detail you’d expect, his direction truly shines in his depiction of deterioration. Orlok’s castle feels lived in but withered and neglected as you practically feel the musty air. While most of Eggers’ direction is creepingly moody, his pacing in the castle is significantly faster with disorienting transitions, as if in a whole other world. Coupled with the looming shadows and overarching decay, Eggers took what already worked in Muranu’s film and amplified it to a horrifying degree.
2) COVID
Both Nosferatu films incorporate the black plague into Orlok’s corrupting influence. Like his decaying castle, every space Orlok occupies drains of life, heightened when he arrives in Harker’s town, and his mere presence spreads plague and nightmare. While the original touches on Orlok’s ship bringing in plague rats, Eggers heightens the terror, showing the chaos, disease, and rot the plague begets. He transforms the black plague into a feature and makes it a full-on plot point, contextualizing the characters’ growing terror with the oncoming festering disease. When the characters talk of quarantine, feeling trapped in their homes, and the danger of trying to walk the streets, one can’t help but be brought back to the tumultuous onslaught of COVID-19.
3) Mental Health
Eggers’ Nosferatu addresses the changing trends in mental health care, especially in relation to people corrupted by Count Orlok. Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson), particularly calls out how his hospital trying to move away from simply locking away people with mental health issues. The sentiment gets more complicated as people get more erratic, and while the institutions are transitioning away from barbaric treatment toward the mentally ill, societal sensibilities still remain prejudicial, as shown towards Ellen Harker. Amongst a bevy of fantastic performances of Nosferatu, Lily Rose-Depp was the true standout as Ellen Harker. Her physical and raw performance shifted from quiet, sensitive tones to pulse-pounding fervor. Throughout, she, along with her husband, Thomas (Nicholas Holt), references past bouts of depression and rages that she experienced. While not explicitly named, the film implied that Ellen Harker experiences depression and/or bipolar disorder. Harker’s mental health concerns are often thrown at her face to discredit her legitimate fears of Orlok’s power or downplay her concerns about Thomas’s health.
4) Reconciling “Shame”
(Trigger Warning: implied sexual assault)
In Eggers’ Nosferatu, Ellen implies she had a prior sexual entanglement with Count Orlok. While we don’t know many details (or frankly, if it’s even true), she cites this experience as a source of anxiety and trauma regarding her marriage with Thomas. Vampires are culturally sexual monsters, often using sexuality as a corrupting influence over the puritanical Christians, which over time led to fetishizing vampire lore as reflecting freedom from cultural, sexual repression. Considering Harker’s trauma and Eggers’ intent to maintain Count Orlok’s mantra of corruption, someone could read that Count Orlok sexually assaulted Ellen Harker, and her anxiety stems from a perceived shame from the experience. Harker’s arc involves combating Orlok by owning her sexuality rather than Orlok retaining power and control over her
5) Modernizing Without History
As Prof. Franz and Ellen Harker try to warn Ellen and Thomas’ friend, Fredrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), of the oncoming threat of Count Orlok, he doesn’t believe them. Vampire lore and the alchemic realms Prof. Franz exercises in are considered old-fashioned, and there’s much discussion about abandoning superstitions of the past. Even Count Orlok describes a desire to move away from the superstitious peasants he lives amongst and embrace the modern world. Eggers’ Nosferatu isn’t anti-progress by any means; it depicts the dangers of tossing the past aside to embrace modernization rather than learning and building off the past to grow. Ignoring the superstitions and traditions of the peasants left Harker’s town unprepared, and Prof. Franz’s findings and teachings about vampirism were mocked and ignored by the scientific community and higher society. Not learning from the past endangered the present and left the town vulnerable to Count Orlok’s rule.