Nosferatu

As someone who went through a deep and intense vampire phase when I was about 13, one that never really ended, words could not describe how excited I was when the remake of Nosferatu was announced. Now I hate remakes on principal but I will never say no to more vampires. Vampires are always good, especially when we take them back to their roots. For those of you who don’t know the original Nosferatu film was an unauthorized Dracula adaptation so if you are noticing a beat for beat resemblance, you should.

Right off the bat Nicholas Hoult is incredible. He has been getting a good amount of work this year and he has done a great job of showing his range. I think this role gave him a lot of opportunity to display his ability to do more of a period piece. Aaron Taylor Johnson also did a lot better than I would have thought, he has also been booked and busy though it is unclear why. He was good enough in this movie. And then of course we have William DeFoe who has been in like a dozen movies in the last couple of years. He was perfect for the eccentric doctor, this was a movie he was meant to be in. Lily-Rose was INCREDIBLE, I seriously think she did the best job. She was brilliant. Robert Eggers really was the perfect person for this project, it could not have been more up his alley.

I think this version of Nosferatu was a perfect blend of original vampire media and current trends. Nosferatu has always been scary. Vampire lore at its core is creepy, it's disgusting, they are literally monsters. I think the design of Nosferatu was an amazing representation of that. He was gross, bald, bumpy, disgusting. He was everything he should have been. There was plenty of blood and gore. And then we have the much more recent trend with vampires of the main characters being physically drawn to them. There being some kind of sex element. Ellen being the key to ending the curse was phenomenal and did a great job of highlighting the trend in vampire media of women sacrificing themselves to the darkness and I love that it highlighted how creepy that is simply by making Nosferatu unattractive.

Nosferatu was everything that vampire media should be. Not that Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood don’t have their place but vampire lore has existed for centuries and returning their depictions to their monster roots is exactly what they needed.

I think the pacing was pretty good, and the act structure blended together relatively well. It did drag a little bit in the middle and I think it was about 30 minutes too long. Had they trimmed things down a little bit it would have been a lot better. Hellen’s sickness is really the part that we could have cut a little bit, and then again when Thomas comes back. Them reuniting and clearly being taken over by Nosferatu’s influence could have been trimmed down a little.

But overall the film was great, if it weren’t for the pacing problems in the middle it would have earned a perfect core. I think as it stands it gets a good 8.5/10. Bill Skarsgaurd was seriously transformative as Nosferatu. And the rest of the cast was so perfect and expertly placed. Eggers proves that he is the guy for monster movies, the creep and gore is definitely his expertise. The stand out performance for me was Lily-Rose Depp, she brought just so much depth from a role that could have been very detached.