He is coming. In 1830’s Germany, husband and wife Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) and Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) are filled with love and the ambition to build a solid future foundation. Thomas works as a part-time real estate agent, chasing that life-changing transaction. Ellen supports him from the sidelines as a doting wife, completely satisfied at the bond she and Thomas have. Being with Thomas has allowed her to move past the traumatic experience and resulting depression she had as a youngster when an unexplained force terrified her life through visions and feelings.

Thomas gets his opportunity to become embedded in the real estate firm. All he has to do? Meet Transylvanian Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to talk business and pitch options in Wisberg, Germany. Easy sale on the horizon. Only problem is, Thomas has to go to Orlok’s turf due to the failing health of the prospective buyer. Despite Ellen’s fevered pleas to stay home as she senses something sinister is at play, Thomas sets journey to Orlok’s castle. He’ll never be the same again, and neither will the this little town in Germany once the ancient evil of Orlok descends upon it.

Releasing a movie that retells the story of the world’s most famous vampire? On Christmas Day? Very interesting choice, but when the movie is directed, written, and produced by one Robert Eggers, it’s a choice that invites a lot of curiosity and a strong counterprogramming option. As we’ve seen in previous features, the auteur has an amazing talent to blend his originality into historical settings and stories.

Four films in, Eggers has quickly become a filmmaker who has a style and vibe that sticks out in mere minutes, with a focus on the deliberate over the dynamic. The event director doesn’t just create scenes, he uses his genuine interest in history and folklore to imagine fully fleshed worlds chock-full with the most minute of details. In the case of Nosferatu, his central subject and gothic-heavy setting is one that has been done to death over the span of 100 years, yet Eggers manages to put his own imprint on the longstanding material, immersion helped immensely by shooting in Prague. Longtime cinematographer partner Jarin Blaschke returns with another stellar contribution; what the duo concoct in the stretch of movie within Orlok’s castle is nothing short of sublime from the way Eggers keeps the titular subject out of focus to the impressive lighting, disorienting point-of-view, and more. It’s here where the film is at its scariest and argurably peaks. On technical prowess and set/costume production alone, Nosferatu is worth the price of admission.

Distilled to its most simplistic reading (and it’s right there in the synopsis used), Eggers’ story in Nosferatu is one of love and sacrifice versus obsession and self-gratification, and how the expression of the carnal pleasures changes when its conjoined by one end of the polarity against the other. Yes, Eggers’ version of the famed vampire is pretty sexual and maybe too blunt at times visually with its metaphor, but for the most part, the director is tasteful when deploying these moments. The dialogue is historically acute just like his previous features, you’ll never get tired of hearing people talk. Where his script feels the thinnest is on the characters; there’s a coldness and distance to all of them and they more or less exist in a setting that makes a stronger, lasting imprint upon completion then any of them do, though that could be a function of the source material that by all accounts Eggers adheres to. It’s totally fine for a film to be more driven by vibes than plot, particularly if it looks and feels like this one, but I’m not sure that I’m going to have an immediate itch to return to it.

No doubt, Nosferatu’s cast is fully committed, though at times characters (two portrayed by Dafoe and Taylor-Johnson) feel like they’re coming from different movies. The clear standout is Skarsgård, surpassing his Pennywise turn with a calculating, skin-crawling performance as the Count. Even prior to the first full shot of his twisted figure, Skarsgård’s vocals invoke the feeling of unstoppable depravity that cannot be halted by normal means. His direct counterpart, Depp, is at her best when the feature demands her to get physical to sell Orlok’s hold on Ellen. His tangential counterpart in Hoult really does all of the heavy lifting early on as the audience cipher into this horrific setup.

Nearly a decade in the making from announcement to release, Eggers’ Nosferatu is a labor of love and a deep commitment to a vision conceived long ago. What it misses in narrative verve, it makes up for in cinematic vitality.

B

Photo credits go to impawards.com, slashfilm.com, screenrant.com, and syfy.com.