Nosferatu in Spandex

Played more like a rabid dog, cowering in the corner, Max Schreck’s interpretation of Nosferatu in 1922 is less a spectacle and more a freak of nature. The audience can’t help but feel fear turned to pity, as if the Phantom of the Opera becomes tangible reality, and the myth lingers in the fog. 

Robert Eggers’s incarnation is described as an “insufferable darkness,” an “appetite.” When its physical presence is exposed, we are left with nothing more than that—a hollow shell of ugly evil. I’m sorry to say that after a solid first hour of impending dread, this vamp gets redundant.

I started ReelyBernie.com at the inception of Robert Eggers’s masterworks. The Witch (2015) was eerily ambiguous, The Lighthouse (2019) was humorously maddening, and The Northman (2022) creatively blended spiritualism with Viking sweat. They are all brutal, cold, and drenched in storm water.

I think Eggers went too far with this one. Aside from a couple of refreshing whims from Willem Dafoe’s Professor von Franz and more narrative focus on Thomas Hutter’s wife, Ellen (Lily Rose-Depp), dark is dark is dark. And the more Bill Skarsgård’s muscular/CGI-texturized vampire gets screen time, the more you can hear the “ding-ding-ding” of a WWE ring. His unseen face and ghastly voice at the beginning of the movie were so much more effective.

Lily Rose-Depp is commendable, but I’m afraid her character is merely a pawn of obligatory eroticism, and that angle gets shut down the moment Skarsgård dully appears in her room in a pissy mood. Where’s the power of seduction? Where’s the allure? Dark is dark is dark.

Call me too traditionalist, but I prefer the pale, disease-bearing beast of the Carpathian Mountains over the handlebar-mustached wrestler. Unlike his previous movies, Eggers leaves very little room for the imagination. When the music, performances, and darkness get old, this critic prefers an older movie.

Nosferatu (2024) **1/2 out of *****