Nosferatu
Chilling drama by Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) about a tormented young woman and the lurid vampire in love with her, resulting in unprecedented horrors.
Great filmmakers like F.W. Murnau, Werner Herzog, and Francis Ford Coppola preceded him, and now it is Robert Eggers’ turn to venture into a film about the doomed Count of Transylvania – a vampire who cannot suppress his lust. Count Orlok plans to buy property in the German port city of Wisborg and has a real estate agent come to his castle to oversee the signing of the documents. Orlok, however, is primarily interested in Ellen, the agent’s young bride.
History, religion, folklore, fairy tales and myths have been the ingredients of director Robert Eggers’ previous films. Since childhood, the American has been under the spell of F.W. Murnau’s horror classic Nosferatu – A Symphony Of Horror (1922), an unauthorized film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It has long been Eggers’ desire to create his own version of this story, drawing inspiration from both the original screenplay for Murnau’s Nosferatu and Stoker’s novel. In Nosferatu, Eggers focuses especially on the psychological and sexual connotations of Stoker’s immortal story. Whereas in some film versions of this story there is still something swooningly romantic about Orlok’s love for Ellen, here it is more a case of savage, animalistic desire.
Eggers is also known for putting his own stamp on the horror genre by paying great attention to the design of his films. As such, one could just as easily call Nosferatu a Gothic period drama (all the costumes and props are true to the story’s nineteenth-century setting) as a horror film. Though the average lover of period dramas might need to be warned about the horrific rat plague Eggers unleashes in the third act. (mv)