Since being released in 1897, Bram Stoker's Dracula has become one of the most adapted stories across mediums. F. W. Murnau famously ripped off the tale for his 1922 silent film, and Nosferatu was born. Much like Dracula's sweeping cape, Count Orlok's shadow creeping up the stairs has become synonymous with the vampire genre, haunting the nightmares of genre fans for more than 100 years. Its imagery and chilling narrative have stuck with many, including Robert Eggers, the creative force behind The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman. Nosferatu became a passion project for the director, one that comes to the big screen just in time to kick off the 2025 film calendar.
With a star-studded cast featuring Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, and Ralph Ineson, Nosferatu begins with Depp's Ellen Hutter writhing on the floor in the evening gloom after answering to the call of an other-worldly voice. Years later, her husband Thomas (Hoult) must reluctantly leave his newly-wed bubble to travel to the Carpathian Mountains to finalise the purchase of a property in London from the buyer's hometown in Transylvania. Once he travels there he meets his client, the mysterious Count Orlok, and is horrified to discover the Count's true historic nature while wandering his castle in a sleep-deprived daze. After escaping the fortress, Thomas attempts to rush back to England in time to save his loved ones including Ellen, who has become the object of Nosferatu's obsession.
From its nerve-shredding opening scene to its devastating closing act and haunting final scene, Nosferatu is a feast for the senses. A sumptuous, blood-soaked gothic drama exploring sex, death, obsession, and devotion enrobed in cinematography so beautiful that each scene could be hung like artwork in the very manors that inhabit the film's universe. Eggers' attention to detail and devotion to time-period-appropriate props and lighting elevate Nosferatu's eerie beauty, with sets adorned with 19th-century props and some scenes lit entirely by candlelight. Eggers' use of shadow work calling back to the age of silent cinema adds a nightmarish quality to Nosferatu and accentuates the horror of Orlok's ability to feel like he is everywhere and yet nowhere all at once.
Nosferatu's marketing has kept Skarsgård's Orlok hidden, and the film does much the same teasing viewers with stolen glances at the undead count as he growls and purrs at his victims in a booming voice that reverberates around each scene and in the audience's mind. Much of the horror of Eggers' adaptation is it does away with many of the vampire tropes that have come to define the creatures, reinvigorating the subgenre and creating a new nightmare that feels everpresent. While Skarsgård's character still represents death and sexual liberation like many vampires, his insidious relationship with Ellen adds a sickening layer to the narrative, as does the cloud of rats that spread his evil through the streets of England that feels even more skin-crawlingly prevalent in a post-pandemic world.
While Skarsgård's Orlok provides many of the film's most heart-pounding, anxiety-inducing moments, it is Depp that is a revelation throughout Nosferatu. Whether delivering a tear-filled monologue or demonically contorting while garbling unknown horrors, she is captivating whenever she graces the screen in a way that makes Ellen feel like a force to be reckoned with and feared much like Orlok himself. Hoult delivers a similarly complex and powerful performance as Thomas, while Willen Dafoe's eccentric Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz offers cutting comic relief amid large sections of woe. Taylor-Johnson and Corrin are electric as Ellen and Thomas' close friends Friedrich and Anna Harding, with their descent into madness feeling palpable as Orlok's grip tightens on Ellen's loved ones in a bid to win her affection.
Like a fever dream, Nosferatu is a terrifying experience that does not end once the credits roll. Its haunting imagery and sombre themes will claw into your skin and leave a permanent mark that will take time to leave, if ever. At points, it feels like a real evil is playing out before your eyes, something that transcends a simple horror remake. Both technically and creatively, Eggers has created something remarkable in horror epic Nosferatu that is sure to set the bar for all vampire films, and indeed genre films, to follow it.
Nosferatu is released in UK cinemas on January 1
