NOSFERATU, A Symphony of Horror reincarnated

Reading time: 9:20 minutes

With NOSFERATU, Robert Eggers fulfills his lifelong dream to give F.W. Murnau's century-old horror film a modern, 21st-century update. 

Dracula, Nosferatu, Orlok. Everyone's favorite bloodsucker has been reincarnated once again. This time, in a film by Robert Eggers, who is fulfilling a lifelong dream by giving Murnau's century-old film a 21st-century update. Updates don’t necessarily mean improvements (as this computerage has made abundantly clear) but in this case, they don't have to. The unrelenting fascination with canonical (horror) cinema makes a new Nosferatu an event, and the curiosity paired with the excitement that accompanies it cannot be sufficiently valued, especially in these dreary times.

Nosferatu, phantom of the night, a symphony of horror, scourge of humanity, was brought to film over 100 years ago by director F.W. Murnau, screenwriter Henrik Galeen, and designer Albin Grau. The story can be considered familiar. The first cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a case of copyright theft. The creators attempted to obscure this by changing the names of the main characters: Dracula became Orlok, Jonathan Harker became Thomas Hutter, his wife Mina was renamed Ellen and the boss of Jonathan Harker, Peter Hawkins, merged with the psychiatric patient Renfield into the role of Knock. Stoker's widow wasn’t fooled and successfully had the film ordered out of circulation. She even managed to have the court mandate that all existing copies be destroyed. That effort, thankfully, failed—darkness be praised—and the rest is film history. Nosferatu may well be the most iconic horror film ever made, one that continues to capture the imagination to this day.

Equally mythical is the story of the film’s creation. Nosferatu sprang from the vision of Albin Grau, a designer, architect, and avid occult enthusiast. One of his motivations for making Nosferatu was his belief that the father of one of his comrades in World War 1 was a vampire. The dark romantic forces to which Germans have always been sensitive blossomed on the battlefields of the Great War, a place where young men fell in the prime of their lives. Every film, every work of art, reflects—willingly or not—the zeitgeist. In Nosferatu, the story of the undead bloodsucker as a threat to the benighted bourgeois seemed to reflect a grim nostalgia in a society struggling to regain its balance in the aftermath of a mass slaughter.

A film, or any work of art, generates its greatest power through the story the audiences can add to it themselves—when the film takes on a life of its own in the viewer’s mind. Murnau's film feeds this storytelling in ways few others do. The lack of sound and the gritty, high-contrast black-and-white visuals amplify the imagination, making the movie feel like found footage. With its documentary-like quality and the appearance of the actor with the perfect name, Max Schreck, Nosferatu almost looks like a real vampire caught on camera (a concept explored in Shadow of a Vampire, where Willem Dafoe portrays Schreck as an actual vampire). Nosferatu is definitive in its rawness—a silent film for which hundreds of soundtracks have since been composed, from classical symphonic ones to modern rock. Watching the film accompanied by live music remains a unique experience.

Werner Herzog was the first to venture into a remake. It was more of a free adaptation than a remake as he himself said. A tribute to the greatest film that had ever come out of Germany. With his remake, Herzog wanted to build a bridge to the grandfather of German cinema, Murnau. A bridge that necessarily skipped a generation because the generation of Herzog's potential film father(s) was tainted with a Nazi past.
 
In Herzog’s film, unencumbered by copyright issues, Orlok is once again Dracula, and Thomas Hutter is Jonathan Harker (his wife, however, is Lucy, Mina’s friend in Stoker’s novel who is notably absent from Murnau’s film, leaving her name vacant - or something like that). In Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani, Herzog finds a couple that is incredibly photogenic and, as a modern incarnation of Orlok and Ellen, refers to the era of silent film.

Herzog’s Nosferatu is a poetic meditation on isolation and decay. It doesn’t try to be a horror film. Kinski’s Dracula is a socially awkward figure, someone who has lost all social skills through centuries of isolation. Kinski’s vampire is menacing without ever trying to be scary. His haunting presence, combined with Herzog’s understated style, creates a profoundly unsettling experience. The film’s pale, chilling ending heightens this unease. Jonathan Harker’s wife sacrifices herself, as in Murnau’s version, to free the world from Nosferatu’s curse. But Herzog adds an epilogue: Jonathan himself, transformed into a vampire by Dracula’s bite, rides off into the horizon in daylight, suggesting that Nosferatu’s curse not only persists but has evolved into a more resilient form.

The woman who saves the world (or not). ​A reminder:
Mina Harker: Stoker (1897)
Ellen Hutter: Murnau (1922)
Lucy Harker: Herzog (1979)
Ellen Hutter: Eggers (2024)

“It's a scary film. It's a horror movie. It's a Gothic horror movie. And I do think that there hasn't been an old-school Gothic movie that's actually scary in a while. And I think that the majority of audiences will find this one to be the case.” (Robert Eggers)

In the 21st century—an era where the light just won't break through—a creature of the night will find its natural habitat. Robert Eggers seems attuned to this. While his motivation leans more toward entertainment than catharsis, Eggers understands that the time is ripe for an “old-school gothic horror film that’s genuinely scary.” Eggers consciously places his version of Nosferatu within the tradition of vampire films sparked by the 1922 original. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Hammer movies and the Mel Brooks spoof Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Eggers adds his own flair by adjusting and introducing key scenes. For instance, Knock’s death is altered: Hutter kills him with a stake through the heart, a moment where Knock seems to regain his sanity, realizing that his devotion to Orlok hasn’t secured him eternal life but left him as vulnerable as anyone else.
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Unlike Herzog, Eggers reverts to the names of the original. For the roles, he cast Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter. Nicholas Hoult is Thomas Hutter. (Hoult is no stranger to the Dracula repertoire; he was previously seen as Renfield in the film of the same name in which Nicolas Cage smirks his way through the role of Dracula.) Simon McBurney, theatre director with a creditable acting track record, is Knock and Willem Dafoe returns after Egger's previous film, The Lighthouse, as the doctor of occult affairs, Albin Eberhart Von Franz (the Van Helsing-role and yes, the name refers to Albin Grau). Bill Skarsgård is transformed beyond recognition into a monstrous Count Orlok.

The film is unmistakably a product of our time—a time in which buildup and proper tempo are often sacrificed for action and rapid editing. Despite the fact that Eggers demonstrated a strong sense of pacing in his previous films The Witch and The Lighthouse, Nosferatu too falls prey to the trend of keeping tension arcs short. Yet the film still feels overly long, mainly because it contains too many scenes and burdens its characters with too much (mediocre) dialogue. It seems as though the film fears its audience won’t understand it without everything being explained, leaving little to no room for ambiguity.
 
For the soundtrack, Eggers wanted to rely on the sound of instruments from the period in which the film is set—a (fictional) 19th-century Germany. No electronics, then. Composer Robin Carolan, who also collaborated with Eggers on The Northman, stays in the spirit of James Bernard, the soundtrack composer of many Hammer films. While the soundtrack didn’t particularly stand out while watching the film—it’s no Popol Vuh for Herzog’s Nosferatu—my appreciation for it grew after listening to it separately. It’s a beautiful symphonic score with enough dissonance to avoid excessive sweetness, although it could have used a bit more edginess in the final scene.

The visuals also reference romantic artworks. It looks stunning, and lovers of classic gothic horror will delight in it, but the film feels like a collection of trailers lacking a cohesive overarching tension arc. While it has plenty of atmosphere, it lacks buildup. Each scene feels like an elevator pitch that needs to make its point, evoke instant scares, and provide instant gratification. In Herzog’s version, for instance, the ship bringing Orlok/Dracula to Wisburg is shown in a mundane way, with the impending doom settling into the viewer’s mind through the preceding buildup. By contrast, Eggers shows us a wrecked ship with rats stranded on the harbor, immediately leading to the conclusion that the plague has arrived in Wisburg. It’s instant information without buildup. Herzog’s film draws us into a story with real people confronting supernatural evil. Eggers’ film, on the other hand, is a pressure cooker of instant hysteria where the connection between the human factor and the supernatural is insufficiently developed. In that pressure cooker, not only does the story fall apart, but so does the world in which it takes place. Herzog presents us with a world that feels scalable. We see Harker traveling through a landscape, arriving at an inn and castle, and when we follow him inside, we remain in the same world. Eggers’ world, however, breaks apart into isolated, enclosed spaces that have an artificial gloss on them. It can be considered the curse of many modern productions: even when computer-generated imagery is avoided—Eggers opted for practical effects like a real castle, real animals (wolves and rats!), and potato flakes as snow (a technique borrowed from a 1940s film)—post-production still makes the end result look like CGI. There, the tragedy of the filmmaker reverting to analogue sources and getting trapped in contemporary pixels manifests itself. In terms of visuals and direction, Nosferatu seems more inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula from 1992 than its predecessors from 1922 and 1979 (though it is by no means as bad as Coppola’s film, which looks beautiful but gives us actors who walk around like they’re failing an audition).

As Ellen Hutter, Lily-Rose Depp carries the weight of all the misfortune; she awakens Orlok from his centuries-long slumber. Eggers had her watch a series of films for inspiration for her role, including Ken Russell’s The Devils. And it shows. Depp portrays a woman gripped by melancholy—not the kind of pain that secretly feels good, but the 19th-century version: a state of deep depression. When her depressive episodes escalate into Exorcist-like hysteria, the supposed intensity becomes somewhat tiring. There’s room for beautiful and poignant reflections on Ellen's relationship with Orlok—on the allure of evil, on unfulfilled desires and vague fears seeking a dark outlet. However, the film doesn’t connect us to Ellen Hutter’s deeper psychology; it fails to explore her character’s layers. The film falls flat here.

Now Orlok is a flat character by nature. His motivations seem purely nihilistic. He comes across as someone obsessed with bureaucracy and formal agreements. He meticulously follows the process of buying a house, ensures that both Thomas and Ellen "consent" to her marriage to him, and has it confirmed in writing. This obsession with bureaucracy makes sense—it serves nobles and landowners exceptionally well. Deeds and contracts outlive people, and mastery of bureaucracy enhances power.
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However, Orlok’s betrayal of the pact he made with Knock reveals something crucial: Orlok doesn’t actually respect oaths or agreements. No two-way street here. For him, they are just means to subjugate others. His motivations are purely selfish—he’s driven by the desire to consume, spread chaos and disease, and feed on Ellen. He doesn’t even want to make Ellen immortal or his eternal companion. As a vampire, Orlok shows no interest in creating legions of followers. The rats spreading the plague are merely byproducts of his presence, not tools for a greater goal like conquering the world. His focus is entirely on consumption, particularly of Ellen—even if it leads to his own destruction.

Tod und Mädchen / Egon Schiele

It’s only at the end that Eggers finds poetry within the horror, and it is there that the viewing experience gains depth. The ending is a stunning modern representation of the archetypal image of the Beauty and the Beast, Death and the Maiden. It’s grotesque and baroque—exactly what my gothic horror-loving heart desires. Without beauty, no horror and drama. Ellen sacrifices herself, and Orlok ultimately goes along with it. This makes their final, intimate moment a macabre duet—a necrophilic dance of death. It carries the chilling essence of Richard Strauss' (or Oscar Wilde's) Salome, a scene where horror is sustained by beauty, providing the film with a grotesquely beautiful and harrowing final chord.

Nosferatu is a film with flaws, that much is clear. With its adrenaline-fueled direction it’s like Solti conducting Der Ring, made to impress instantly but something that lacks flow--it doesn’t breathe. And for film, even the ones about undead bloodsuckers, the same rule applies as for music—it must breathe (like a Slayer song or a Bruckner symphony - you have this website for these kinds of comparisons, you're welcome).
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Nosferatu is a film that struggles to balance style and substance. It’s a film with stunning imagery and great moments (the scene where Orlok welcomes Hutter into his castle is wonderfully dark and intense) without becoming a great film. But know that this observation, along with all preceding comments, stems from a love for and engagement with the gothic horror genre. It’s wonderful that films like this are being made. And it’s wonderful that this gothic-romantic horror work of art frees us, if only for the duration of the film, from the everyday news, a world filled with real horrors and real monsters.

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- Wouter de Moor