Nosferatu Movie Review: Robert Eggers' film pays homage to classic horror

UA ADir Robert EggersCast Bill Skarsgard Nicholas Hoult LilyRose DeppRating 35Nosh farmayein First off Irsquom not a horror fan Find rsquoem funny actually Yoursquove gotta be a believer to begin with to truly appreciate the sorta jumpscares that fake ghosts onscreen if there are any other kind inevitably wrap you around withThat said every genre has its crossover films Those are genre movies laden with enough artcraft to leap beyond the basic tropes You neednrsquot be a scifi nut to get into Blade Runner for instanceAs with Nosferatu which is the worldrsquos most aesthetic movie in the visually thematically dark supernaturalvampire sceneI came for the sound at the Dolby preview theatre in Mumbai stayed for the strikingly gothic production design and the play of lights and shadows None of which totally eclipse the filmrsquos primary purposeperformances at any pointIs the director Robert Eggers The Lighthouse The Witch reputably the cat in this horror space the reason to enter the theatre Well reasons are often many and varied depending on the audience noWhat if I told you one of them for a cinephile is to watch this movie chiefly for film appreciation as cinema historyAnd thatrsquos to do with the OG FW Marnaursquos Nosferatu A Symphony of Horror 1922 a German silent film easily available on YouTube that follows the same story with placards for dialogues and a grand musical score that totally deserves a concert inside a cinemaThe new Nosferatu in its content if not the form is essentially a remake of the 103yearold one That in turn was if Irsquom not mistaken the first horror feature everThis is different from the great Werner Herzogrsquos Nosferatu the Vampyre 1979 which was more of a homage to the original German expressionist workWhatrsquos at the centre of it all Well quite simply Bram Stokerrsquos 1897 classic novel Dracula They didnrsquot call it that back in the day because the producers Prana Films didnrsquot have the book rights While it didnrsquot look it that 1922 pic was lowbudgetWriterdirector Eggers sticks to the original namesplot in his bigticket enterprise centuryplus hence still And so there is Count Orlok Bill Skarsgard in place of Count DraculaMore powerful than evil itself he preys on the wife LilyRose Depp of a realestate agent Nicholas Hoult in 1839 What follows is mayhem as the realestate agent heads off to Transylvania to connect with Count Orlok who wants a mansion opposite hisThe agentrsquos boss sends him over When that boss tells him that the clientmdashwho we donrsquot know is the vampire yetmdashwishes him ldquoto be present in the fleshrdquo that phrase takes on a more literal meaning obviouslyYou could study everything that happens in this film as it did in 1922 for the template of an entire genre that it somewhat heralded I guessThere are the naysayer characters who naturally consider the supernatural stuff happening around them as such unscientific mumbojumbo that ldquoNewton would curl back into his wombrdquo Indeed the stuff is real until everybody realises it before itrsquos too late to save the dayPlace this Dracula in a Ramsay flick It feels corny only because the worldbuilding is perhaps deliberately substandardElevate it with craft Eggersrsquos in this case and the suspension of disbelief is normal while you marvel equally at the design of a period film for its own worthYou stop to question how the wife in the movie speaks about her dreaming of an incident where people are dying one by onemdashand she canrsquot stand the stench She can smell in her dreams too Well she makes love to a vampire bro or fears it anywayWhat else do nonhorror fans do in a classic horrornoir Intellectualise it what else look out for subtext I guess Wherein the killing vampire Count Orlok is probably proxy for plague occurring simultaneouslyIn about the same way that perhaps Count Dracula was a standin for Jack the Ripper in the Bram Stoker novelOr read up on the fascination for vampires in teenaged female fantasyfiction that unconsciously alludes to puberty menstruation etc and later with choking and other sexual foreplay NaahThatrsquos just killing all the fun Stick to the films See how Werner Herzog who directly called his villain Dracula in his semirealist Nosferatu 1979 wholly humanised the vampire instead Relatively soft Dracula mourns the lack of daylight love and death in his lifeCount Orlok is more of a shadowy figure lacking in depth instead in both Eggersrsquos and Marnaursquos Nosferatu But you mostly feel for the others around the dark Lord crumbling in despairAnd yoursquore quite taken in by some sort of mysticism in small measures that appears closer to magical realism in the context of moviesI guess by now you know what Irsquove done Watched this film and done a doublebill of the two classics before it onlineItrsquos the same script yes But the story sometimes I suspect is simply incidental to the film experience Nosferatu is one of them Sure you could start with the latest

Nosferatu Movie Review: Robert Eggers' film pays homage to classic horror

U/A: A
Dir: Robert Eggers
Cast: Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp
Rating: 3/5

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Home / Entertainment / Hollywood News / Article / Nosferatu Movie Review: Robert Eggers' film pays homage to classic horror

Nosferatu Movie Review: Robert Eggers' film pays homage to classic horror

U/A: ADir: Robert EggersCast: Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose DeppRating: 3/5

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast

U/A: A
Dir: Robert Eggers
Cast: Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp
Rating: 3/5