Real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) has journeyed to the castle of the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) to deliver a deed to a property the count is interested in purchasing.
While Hutter is away, his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is tormented by nightmares of a mysterious figure intent on possessing her, body and soul...
What is it about Robert Eggers that I do not get?
I have seen all of his movies, most in the theatre.
The only one I enjoyed was The Lighthouse. And I have not bothered to watch it again.
I watched the original Nosferatu for the first time in October 2023, so over a year before this movie came out. My memory of it was vague.
Egger’s obsession with specific historical periods is interesting to watch - but only to a point.
The film tries to juggle between Thomas and Ellen’s storylines - as Thomas finds himself a prisoner, Ellen falls victim to nineteenth century medicine and misogyny.
The latter is potentially the more interesting of the two storylines (or at least, considering its well-used source material, the least well-known or explored).
Ellen being haunted by visions is carried over from the original. This film wants to be more about the way society traps and tortures this woman in order to ‘cure’ her.
It is a tease of a more interesting film, and one rooted in Eggers’ fascination with recreating older worldviews (The Witch, The Northman).
The film feels like it is at too much of a remove from its characters for this to work.
As Ellen, Lily Rose Depp is stuck in one mode of vague despondency. She is not terrible, but she disappears next to Hoult and Emma Corrin.
The film ultimately wants to be about her struggle against Orlok. However, the film does not centre her enough to make that work, and Depp is not compelling enough to drag the movie’s centre of gravity her way.
The redesign of Orlok is underwhelming. Making a change is welcome, but the result is a bit of damp squib.
Eggers has never really tried for a traditional genre piece before.
This film is aiming for a certain emotional catharsis that he is not able to pull off.
There is a race against time element to the finale which the film completely screws up. There is no sense of build-up; the lack of intercutting between the men penetrating Orlok’s new home, and Ellen’s preparation to draw Orlok removes any pace or sense of suspense.
It is not scary, and when the film tries to generate some of the erotic tension implicit to the original story, it fails completely flat.
Not a disaster, but the film ends up as a bit of a whiff.
Related
Dracula (1931 Spanish version)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
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