‘Nosferatu’: A Love Story for the Ages

How do you adapt a story that has been done, and redone to death? You create moments.

It’s impossible to watch Robert Eggers’ (The Lighthouse, The Witch) Gothic horror film Nosferatu and not walk away from the screening without some sort of psychological trauma. It could come from the moment when the timid Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult, The Menu), who is a bodily quiver personified, stands at a crossroads on his way to Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård)’s Grünewald Manor, when a dreadful coach materializes and opens its door without a sound. Tellingly, the viewing audience (at least those of us who aren't naive perpetual optimists) will catch on to the foreshadowing of dreadful fate, yet Hutter, ever the gentleman, takes his hat off before mounting the car clearly controlled by phantoms. 

It could come from the many arresting psychotic breakdowns suffered by his wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp). Or it could come from the final scene which, though predictable to anyone who has watched the story’s many adaptations, leaves the viewer shaking violently as a ghastly shriek comes from the Count. The story itself may be familiar, but the lasting horror of select scenes will stay fresh in viewers minds.

Keeping in line with his unique take on folk horror, Eggers takes on this remake of the 1922 classic. Like most of Eggers’ films, there aren’t many jump scares that make the heart sprint. The draw is in the slow dread that spreads out through the plot line, like a panic attack running a marathon inside your body. In the same way that Ellen is drawn ever closer to Orlok with each passing day, the movie captures that primal fear and strings it along until the first ray of sunlight falls over the last scene of the movie.

The biggest contribution to the dreadful atmosphere is Orlok’s baritone voice. Seeing this movie in a theater, the low bass rumbles the entire theater, sharing the same knee-knocking intimidation with Hutter as we all look up to face the grotesquely massive Count. Punctuated by sickly gasps before continuing to speak, it’s easy to see death is close. We just hope to still be alive to see the credits role.

As Orlok exists in shadows throughout the movie, so too does the legend of Nosferatu.

There’s very little light in Nosferatu, both literally and metaphorically, but Eggers’ film proves that the candle can still be lit, no matter how much wax has melted from other directors giving the story a flame. Like the life of a vampire, the wick never seems to die.