Movie Scene: Lacking a little bite

We start the year off with Robert Eggers’s take on ‘Nosferatu’, originally a 1922 silent film/Dracula knock off, directed by FW Murnau and starring Max Shreck.

Eggers has already proven himself adept at horror with ‘The Witch’ and followed it up with character study ‘The Lighthouse’ and (for me) his most accessible film, the Viking drama ‘The Northman.’ Will ‘Nosferatu’ lack the bite of its predecessors?

Set in 19th century Germany, Ellen Hutter (Lily Rose Depp) is newlywed to Thomas (Nicholas Hoult). Ellen has long suffered from nightmares filled with a mysterious figure she doesn’t recognise. But when Thomas is sent to the Transylvanian castle of Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgard), Ellen’s nightmares get worse, as an ancient evil makes its way nearer and nearer.

Stunning and atmospheric, Egger’s re-imagining of the original film is quite gorgeous to look at. It’s told through inky black nights, hinting candlelight and muted daytime colours, and owes a large debt to German Expressionism and an almost Victorian story-book style production design to the buildings. Snowy landscapes, moonlit nights and ancient monasteries are brought to life through Jarin Blascke’s expert lensing and jarring sound design.

Narratively, and despite some chilling performances, ‘Nosferatu’ didn’t quite live up to the look of it. Eggers adopts quite a sombre tone for the most part, spending a lot of time building up tension throughout the 134-minute run time. A sense of dread seeps through the screen and this is keenly felt as are the few jump scares which are peppered throughout, with a great deal of gore thrown in for good measure. The flip side of this is that themes examining a sense of the unknown and isolation are drawn out, with slow and uneven pacing – which left me detached from the narrative for some of the time. Things do pick up when Dafoe’s Albin Eberhart Von Franz appears and, along with Simon McBurnie’s Renfield replacement, injects a sense of fun into proceedings.

As for other performances, Skarsgard is chilling as Orlock, looking every inch the decaying vampire and owning the screen each time he appears. His scenes with Hoult are deeply unsettling as we watch Thomas wither, helpless under the Count’s spell. Depp is equally as good although she’s sidelined for a lot of the film. Hoult, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Emma Corin and Egger’s regular Ralph Ineson round out the impressive cast.

I don’t think the beautifully crafted ‘Nosferatu’ lacked bite. It just wasn’t a film I could fully sink my teeth into.