Nosferatu (2024)

I always love stumbling across a Christmas movie while catching up on genre fare I missed. Is that weird? Most likely, but then so is this movie, so that's appropriate. I should acknowledge this is one of those times viewers of the film are likely going to be surprised to hear it described as a Christmas movie, as references to the season are relatively sparse. However, the timing is unambiguous and noted on multiple occasions - in fact, the movie goes out of its way a few times to keep Christmas present. There's no reason that Orlok's familiar needed to be captured in the Christmas market, for example, but the movie drops in that detail. The second half of the film is explicitly set during the holidays (possibly the 24th through 28th, though I'm making a few assumptions to get that specific), which is plenty to cement this as a Christmas movie, albeit a subtle one.

Backing up, Nosferatu is a remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent horror film, which in turn was an unofficial adaptation of Dracula. "Mostly unofficial" might be more accurate: German prints of the 1922 film cite Bram Stoker's novel (then still under copyright) as its source, which probably didn't help in the subsequent court case, which nearly resulted in every copy of the film being destroyed.

I'm not sure why writer/director Robert Eggers chose to remake this as Nosferatu as opposed to the more iconic original, which is of course now in the public domain. It's possible he wanted to differentiate his movie from Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Dracula adaptation, or maybe Eggers simply loves the 1922 film and viewed his production as an homage to that first and foremost. His movie embraces Murnau's decision to focus on the vampire's monstrous side, undercutting sequences in which it takes on a more human appearance. Audiences used to sexier takes on vampires may be shocked to see Eggers's demonic, leech-like apparition (then shocked again by how much of the movie hinges on that monster's sex drive).

Likewise, this adopts a plot point added by Murnau in which rats accompany Count Orlok to his new home, where they spread a deadly plague. Unlike Dracula, Nosferatu doesn't appear to sire new vampires (though Eggers adds a scene in which Romani drive a stake through a corpse, suggesting this is at least believed possible). Instead, rats and wolves are his minions.

The movie's ending also skews closer to the 1922 film than Dracula, though this is complicated by the resolution of the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola Dracula film also borrowing from Nosferatu. Comparisons with Coppola's film are a bit of an issue for this version, which does feel somewhat redundant in the way it reimagines the story as a gothic romance. This take on Nosferatu feels a lot like a mashup of the 1992 film and various Guillermo del Toro movies. In my opinion it's visually interesting enough to overcome this, but I was definitely left thinking we were never given a clear answer to the question, "Why did we need another of these?"

The ending in question turns subtext from the original into text. In the 1922 movie, Ellen lures the vampire to her room to drain her, and it remains to be vaporized by the sun in what I believe was cinema's original vampiric "dusting." There are sexual undertones to all this, but Orlok merely bites her on the neck.

In Eggers's version, the two share a connection from her childhood and are psychically connected. Orlok travels to Ellen's city to claim her as a bride - he's fixated on her specifically. Again, this is all a little too reminiscent of Coppola's take to feel fresh, but it allows for some thematic exploration of the way women are ignored and aren't taken seriously. It also allows Eggers to explore themes of sexual desire. We're told that Ellen desires Orlok even while being repulsed by him, though it's worth noting her desire may stem from a form of grooming. It's also worth noting there's often a sexual component to Orlok's feeding regardless of his victim's gender - he often climbs on top of his prey and feeds from their chest (one of several ideas Eggers draws from folklore, rather than modern convention). At the end of the movie, Ellen and Orlok's encounter is explicitly sexual.

The politics and meaning surrounding that finale are difficult to unravel in context. Ellen's choice is a sacrifice to save her husband and neighbors, but she also desires the union and seems to take pleasure in it. There are elements of grooming and abuse in her relationship with Orlok, but Ellen seems to have at least equal control (the ending hinges on her keeping him with her until the sun rises, after all). The underlying framework is drawn from the 1922 film, but transforming implied sexuality to something explicit creates complications the movie isn't fully able to resolve. Eggers wants Ellen's sacrifice to be triumphant (albeit tragic), but this prevents it from fully acknowledging aspects of sexual assault. This will probably be a dealbreaker for some viewers, and understandably so.

At the same time, the movie does an admirable job exploring the ways society undervalues and ignores women to its detriment. Ellen perceives the danger Orlok represents early in the movie, but she's dismissed by male characters as unwell or irrational. The one character who takes her seriously is Albin Eberhart von Franz, a sort of Van Helsing analog played by Willem Dafoe. While von Franz isn't dismissive of Ellen, he's all too eager to sacrifice her to the vampire in order to end the curse. By the end we realize he's as mad as his detractors claimed all along, despite being right about the nature of the threat.

I'm not entirely sure where my opinion falls on whether the ending succeeds in its goals thematically. It's clear Eggers spent a great deal of time thinking about what he was putting on screen and trying to work through the implications, but he's juggling a lot of balls at once here. The movie is essentially an attempt to convert subtext into text, both in terms of gothic literature's avoidance of overt sexuality and of early film's inability or unwillingness to portray gore.

The problem comes from the movie's ability to balance the resulting tones and genres. In one sense, this is less a horror movie than a romantic gothic melodrama. If it weren't for the movie constantly invoking gross-out imagery, I wouldn't hesitate to fix that label to the film. But that imagery (and associated sound design) leaves an impression. I don't think any of it's bad, just at odds with itself. This isn't a major issue (I'm not even 100% convinced it's an issue, at all), but it makes it difficult to get swept up in the gothic romance aspect of things when every ten or fifteen minutes something gross pops up, as if to remind you it's supposedly a horror film (despite the fact it wasn't even trying to be all that scary).

Again, this is all intentional - I'm just not convinced the effect entirely works.

Likewise, some of the movie's casting choices come off a bit lazy in the abstract. Nicholas Hoult plays Ellen's husband, Hutter - he's not at all bad, but having the star of Renfield in another vampire movie so soon is distracting. Likewise, Willem Dafoe famously played Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire, which gives his presence here the air of stunt casting (apparently, he was even considered for Orlok). This is in spite of him being fantastic in this movie - the issue is his presence, not his performance. Bill Skarsgård is unrecognizable as Orlok, so it's hard to find fault there.

No real complaints about Orlok in general, in fact. I found this take fascinating, both as an update on the source material and a radical reinvention of the concept. I mentioned already that the character borrows heavily from the underlying folklore in design and behavior: there's a lot of this pulling from ideas predating the 1922 film and Stoker's novel. I also loved the detail of Orlok drawing in air like a bellows, then exhaling to speak, the way an undead creature presumably would have to. Skarsgård apparently spent an immense amount of effort developing the character's voice, and that pays off, as well.

Likewise, the movie is brilliantly designed and shot - it looks gorgeous. When I say this movie ultimately worked for me, it's mainly because countless individual elements are so well executed, they overshadow conceptual issues and lingering questions about redundancy. This isn't a case where the movie manages to rework the source material into something that feels completely unique, but as an entry in a sort of quasi-franchise dating back more than 100 years, it's a solid entry.

Now then, let's talk Christmas. That's why we're here after all.

I said at the outset the timing was unambiguous. Interestingly, the original was clear on when it was set, as well, but the 1922 film took place in summer (or at least Orlok's boat trip was in July). I'd argue this actually works a little better with the plague and associated imagery of rotting meat (the remake leans heavily on such descriptions, despite the fact you'd think the cold would preserve bodies and stifle odors). Hot summer weather also would have lent itself to the sense of suffocation Eggers invokes.

So why move the story to winter? I'm not entirely sure. It could be an homage to the 1921 film, The Phantom Carriage - I found an article interpreting a mysterious carriage in Eggers's movie as a reference to that film. It's certainly possible, though I'm not entirely convinced. There's a similar carriage in the 1922 Nosferatu, so the one in the remake might just be an update of that scene (or maybe the original was also nodding to The Phantom Carriage). Regardless, both the setting and image make for fascinating parallels, at the very least.

I'm more inclined to suspect similarities with modern Christmas genre movies, such as Prometheus and The Green Knight. In this context, Eggers's Nosferatu can be viewed as part of a trend exploring concepts of death, sacred sacrifices, and cyclical patterns. The movie features a coda explaining that vampires can only be killed by the sacrifice of an innocent woman. The concept and coda are drawn from the original, but the remake fixates more on the idea it's happened before. Similar to the 2005 King Kong remake, there's a sense throughout Eggers's film that this has all happened before because you're seeing a remake, as if the new movie is itself a ritual. Here, that mirrors the ritual in the film culminating with Ellen offering herself to Orlok to end the plague. Setting this at Christmas aligns with ideas borrowed from James Frazer by Hollywood. Eggers seems to reference Frazer, albeit obliquely, in this interview with The Film Comment podcast where he describes the union between Orlok and Ellen as resembling a "Sacred marriage," a concept explored at length in The Golden Bough.

As I've said before, I'm not entirely clear where that got tangled up with Christmas (Frazer himself didn't seem to be all that interested in the holiday, aside from speculating a connection with the king cake Epiphany tradition), but we've seen this motif repeated in Christmas folk horror for at least the past fifty years (perhaps it's simply movies changing The Wicker Man's midsummer setting to midwinter).

It's also possible Eggers was inspired to highlight themes of an old world intruding on a modern one. This idea is brought up several times throughout the film, which argues we must confront the horrors of our past if we hope to progress beyond them. A holiday setting could be seen as symbolizing this idea, with the death of the old year giving way to a new one. Similar themes were explored in holiday horror films The Mystery of the Wax Museum and Cronos (the latter also being a vampire movie). If this was in fact the motivation for Nosferatu's setting, it's a little odd the movie doesn't highlight New Year's specifically. It wouldn't have been hard to establish the finale taking place on New Year's Eve, for example.

Whether or not any or all of the above was intended, the movie's setting has the effect of invoking all of these ideas, making it interesting as Christmas media. It of course ties into old traditions of Christmas ghost stories and folklore surrounding demons, spirits, and monsters being active during the weeks around Christmas. Given his fascination with folklore, I feel secure assuming Eggers is well versed on that subject.

On a more surface level, it also makes for striking imagery of snowy landscapes which are at once beautiful and evocative of death. I should note that Nosferatu was also released on Christmas, though I certainly don't consider that a prerequisite of being considered Christmas entertainment.

This certainly isn't my favorite of Eggers's movies, nor would I list it among my favorite Christmas horror films. Still, the level at which this is executed, both technically and artistically, is more than sufficient to be worth a recommendation. Yes, this is retreading similar ground Coppola explored three decades ago, but the end result is as least as good. We'd be better off if all remakes were handled with this level of care and skill.