Rating: ★★★

Nosferatu (1922) was the second ever vampire film. It has the stature of a classic. It was made during the great era of German Expressionism and Max Schreck’s gaunt, rat-like Count Orlok has an incredibly creepy presence that still fascinates. The film was an uncredited version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) with the characters being given name changes – Count Orlok instead of Dracula – but was still sufficient for Bram stoker’s widow to sue and demand all prints be destroyed. Luckily for cinema history, they weren’t and we are granted the first great vampire classic.

Nosferatu has had enormous influence. There was a remake with Werner Herzog’s also well worthwhile Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) starring Klaus Kinski, which produced a sequel with Nosferatu in Venice (1988). There was also Shadow of the Vampire (2000), which is set around the making of Nosferatu and posits that Max Schreck (played by Willem Dafoe) was a real vampire. A vampire named Max Schreck turns up in Son of Darkness: To Die For II (1991); Batman Returns (1992) and Final Destination (2000) feature characters named Max Schreck; while in Targets (1968), Boris Karloff plays an aging horror actor named Byron Orlock; the vampire films Transylvania Twist (1989), The Breed (2001) and Dracula 3000 (2004) feature vampires named Orlock; while a lookalike called Nosferatu appears in Spongebob Squarepants (1999- ). The rat-like look of the vampire has been used in several other films such as Salem’s Lot (1979), Black Water Vampire (2014) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014). Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992) contains a brief homage to Nosferatu, while he also makes a cameo in The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009) and The Munsters (2022). Nosferatu was edited with bad movie footage and a comedy soundtrack in Nosferatu vs Father Pipecock & Sister Funk (2014), while Mimesis: Nosferatu (2018) is set among a present-day recreation.

This is a further remake from Robert Eggers. Eggers made his directorial debut with The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015), an extraordinary work set in the Puritan era amid a family fearful of the intrusion of any evil. This received great acclaim as did Eggers’ follow-ups with The Lighthouse (2019), a work of 19th Century cabin fever with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson going mad on duty at a lighthouse and the Viking drama The Northman (2022). Nosferatu also comes produced by Chris Columbus, director of Home Alone (1990) and the first two Harry Potter films.

Nosferatu was a pet project of Eggers – he even apparently staged a high school version of it at one point and he had been announcing his intentions to conduct a remake ever since The Witch came out. The final product is both deeply indebted to the 1922 original and yet also variant from it. As the opening credits say it is only ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘based on’ the 1922 film. Unlike Werner Herzog, who had the freedom of Dracula being in public domain to name Orlok as Dracula, Eggers reverts to the original and leaves Orlok as Orlok and retains the character names that Henrik Galeen devised – Hutter, Herr Knock and so on. There is minor homage to other versions – the coach’s approach to the castle reminded me a good deal of the opening of Dracula (1931), while the images of the rats overrunning the streets often mimic similar set-ups in Herzog’s film.

I was curious to which interpretation of Nosferatu Eggers films would adhere to more – the Expressionist-influenced 1922 version where the arrival in Transylvania was like stepping over into a world of Mediaeval superstition, or of the 1979 version where Herzog stripped out all the fantastical and Expressionist elements and had Dracula as a physical being. Eggers’ fascination with historical eras sways more towards Herzog’s interpretation.

Eggers is faithful to the original in most regards. The story follows the 1922 film closely. There is much more given over to Ellen, who becomes the central character here and the script readily delves into her state of mind leading up to Orlok’s arrival. We also get more of Simon McBurney as the Renfield equivalent and the added characters of Ellen’s sister Emma Corrin and brother-in-law Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Eggers also adds a Van Helsing (no equivalent of which appeared in the 1922 film, although was present in the 1979 film) with Willem Dafoe’s Professor von Franz.

Eggers makes a film that is drenched in mood. The film opens with a black-and-white dream sequence and there were frequent times I wasn’t sure if everything was actually in black-and-white or just so colour desaturated that it was monochrome. Indeed, Eggers seems to be making is the ultimate Goth music video with imagery of stately decaying mansions, carriages on wintry lanes, boats drifting down canals and brooding mood so palpable it oozes down the screen. As with most of Robert Eggers’ films, he makes great effort to absorb us in the historic period his characters live. The production design and costuming and the detail gone into these is superlative. Indeed, I write this a matter of days after the announcement of the 2025 Academy Awards nominations and Nosferatu is a nominee in four categories including Production Design, Cinematography and Costuming.

I was fully expecting to name Nosferatu in one of my Top 10 films for 2024 but came away disappointed. I am trying to work out why. I think one of these is that the 1922 film is such an iconic work and casts such a huge shadow that you expect Eggers to hit the same sort of places that the original does. Although the surprise is that Eggers borrows from Murnau’s style far less than you expect him to. There is a conspicuous lack of scenes with Orlok vertically rising from his coffin and his shadow skulking up the stairs until at least two-thirds of the way into the film. There are key scenes from the original that you expect – where Thomas cuts his finger and Orlok comes and sucks it, and where he takes the locket admiring Ellen’s picture. The scenes are there but it feels as though Eggers fumbles them – Nicholas Hoult cuts his finger and Orlok suggests he come and sit by the fire, but then the scene just fades out and Hoult comes around in the morning. And when it comes to the locket scene, we hear Bill Skarsgård saying something in his deep voice as he and the locket are on the edge of the frame but the line about her pretty throat comes out in a way where what is said is muted and lacking in key import.

That however brings us to Bill Skarsgård and the reconception of Orlok. For whatever reason, even though he is remaking a well-remembered original, Eggers chooses to throw Schreck’s Orlok out the window and substitute his own lesser conception. For equally baffling reasons, when we arrive at the castle, Eggers chooses to keep Orlok unseen – either an obscured figure, in the background or only partially seen. I am not sure what the reasoning for this – a desire not to copy Murnau? create surprise? – but when Orlok is seen he seems a pathetically human creature, not one that projects a supernatural presence that comes right out of the screen as Max Schreck did in the 1922 film. And that makes Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu quite a disappointment.

(Winner for Best Director (Robert Eggers), Best Cinematography and Best Production Design at this site’s Best of 2024 Awards).

Trailer here