December 19, 2024
FILM: NOSFERATU
DIRECTED BY: ROBERT EGGERS
STARRING: LILY-ROSE DEPP, NICHOLAS HOULT, BILL SKARSGARD
RATING: 2 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
It’s clear that Robert Eggers has a skilled background in production design. His sets and costumes are stellar and he’s deeply immersed in the worlds of the stories he adapts for the screen. However, with Nosferatu, his retelling of the classic F.W. Murnau film from a century ago based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, his style far outweighs the story’s originality. In fact, Nosferatu is an over the top adaptation that forgets that so much of what is depicted on screen has been parodied so many times on screen since. Fifty years ago, for instance, Mel Brooks paid homage to the monster genre while also poking fun at it with Young Frankenstein. There had been so many such films and television series (such as the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows) in the previous half century that the originality by that point was gone and all we could do was enjoy the genre’s sometimes humorous eccentricities. Eggers may not seem to realize that, to many viewers, some of this should be nothing more than fun. (Anybody watch the great vampire FX series What We Do in the Shadows?) He has attempted to make it serious again, which no doubt some viewers will eat up, but I believe he goes too far overboard.
The familiar story concerns real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) who in 1838 is tasked with selling a spooky, run down mansion to one Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard.) The count, of course, is a vampire who is taking control of Hutter’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) from afar. Orlok wants her for his own and thus serious mayhem ensues. Ellen already has had a history of “melancholy.” She has awful nightmares and later slow, ghostly walks at night and epileptic like seizures by day. Her extreme physical movements mimic Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist. I know some people still find that film scary but I never did. Maybe I’ve just never believed in what some of these supernatural stories have tried to sell us but such crazed behavior looks more comical than seriously horrifying.
This is generally the problem I had with most of this film. In too many scenes actors are directed to act hysterically. There’s a lot of shouting, screaming, and mad yelling that feels like an over-the-top stage production. The best scenes are those in which characters are conversing in everyday tones, albeit with a very mannered, formal delivery common among high society characters from the 19th Century.
Then Eggers throws in the visual extremes. Instead of Orlok looking scary he comes across as more grotesque and monstrous. We can applaud the make-up and special effect artists for the creation but he definitely ends up looking like something out of this world rather than something we could see as being truly scary in real life. Thankfully, there aren’t as many grotesque or jump scare scenes as one might expect. Instead hysteria is the focal point.
There’s no question though that the production design is the stand-out feature here. Atmospheres are filled with soft lighting, looking smoky, and foggy. Rain, wind, and snow add to the environment’s sense of foreboding danger and coldness. The score is appropriately intense and swirling at every turn. Plus, all of the conventions of a classic monster film are there: crosses, creepy long fingers, and shadows. The highlight is a true, and expanded, homage to the original Nosferatu featuring Orlok’s arrival through intense shadows on walls.
The actors, as I’ve said, are best when not required to contort their faces or roll their eyes as if possessed by some evil spirit (which, I guess is the point, but again, too much.) Bill Skargard is completely hidden behind his Orlok costume. The voice he uses, which has likely also been sound distorted, sounds a bit like the Oz persona in The Wizard of Oz (and Wicked before we know he is Jeff Goldblum.) Interestingly, Willem Dafoe, who can sometimes be accused of chewing up the scenery in some of his film roles, may be the most contained here. The problem is that his character, a professor, is consumed by beliefs in evil and the supernatural. Science is nothing but a fallacy, according to him. Therein lies the appeal for some of a film like this. If you believe in spirits, Satan, and evil creatures, you might buy into his character’s point of view and thus, Eggers’s perspective within the film as a whole. Otherwise, a lot of what is on display here seems pretty silly.
Nosferatu opens theatrically on December 25th.
FILM: NOSFERATU
DIRECTED BY: ROBERT EGGERS
STARRING: LILY-ROSE DEPP, NICHOLAS HOULT, BILL SKARSGARD
RATING: 2 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
It’s clear that Robert Eggers has a skilled background in production design. His sets and costumes are stellar and he’s deeply immersed in the worlds of the stories he adapts for the screen. However, with Nosferatu, his retelling of the classic F.W. Murnau film from a century ago based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, his style far outweighs the story’s originality. In fact, Nosferatu is an over the top adaptation that forgets that so much of what is depicted on screen has been parodied so many times on screen since. Fifty years ago, for instance, Mel Brooks paid homage to the monster genre while also poking fun at it with Young Frankenstein. There had been so many such films and television series (such as the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows) in the previous half century that the originality by that point was gone and all we could do was enjoy the genre’s sometimes humorous eccentricities. Eggers may not seem to realize that, to many viewers, some of this should be nothing more than fun. (Anybody watch the great vampire FX series What We Do in the Shadows?) He has attempted to make it serious again, which no doubt some viewers will eat up, but I believe he goes too far overboard.
The familiar story concerns real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) who in 1838 is tasked with selling a spooky, run down mansion to one Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard.) The count, of course, is a vampire who is taking control of Hutter’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) from afar. Orlok wants her for his own and thus serious mayhem ensues. Ellen already has had a history of “melancholy.” She has awful nightmares and later slow, ghostly walks at night and epileptic like seizures by day. Her extreme physical movements mimic Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist. I know some people still find that film scary but I never did. Maybe I’ve just never believed in what some of these supernatural stories have tried to sell us but such crazed behavior looks more comical than seriously horrifying.
This is generally the problem I had with most of this film. In too many scenes actors are directed to act hysterically. There’s a lot of shouting, screaming, and mad yelling that feels like an over-the-top stage production. The best scenes are those in which characters are conversing in everyday tones, albeit with a very mannered, formal delivery common among high society characters from the 19th Century.
Then Eggers throws in the visual extremes. Instead of Orlok looking scary he comes across as more grotesque and monstrous. We can applaud the make-up and special effect artists for the creation but he definitely ends up looking like something out of this world rather than something we could see as being truly scary in real life. Thankfully, there aren’t as many grotesque or jump scare scenes as one might expect. Instead hysteria is the focal point.
There’s no question though that the production design is the stand-out feature here. Atmospheres are filled with soft lighting, looking smoky, and foggy. Rain, wind, and snow add to the environment’s sense of foreboding danger and coldness. The score is appropriately intense and swirling at every turn. Plus, all of the conventions of a classic monster film are there: crosses, creepy long fingers, and shadows. The highlight is a true, and expanded, homage to the original Nosferatu featuring Orlok’s arrival through intense shadows on walls.
The actors, as I’ve said, are best when not required to contort their faces or roll their eyes as if possessed by some evil spirit (which, I guess is the point, but again, too much.) Bill Skargard is completely hidden behind his Orlok costume. The voice he uses, which has likely also been sound distorted, sounds a bit like the Oz persona in The Wizard of Oz (and Wicked before we know he is Jeff Goldblum.) Interestingly, Willem Dafoe, who can sometimes be accused of chewing up the scenery in some of his film roles, may be the most contained here. The problem is that his character, a professor, is consumed by beliefs in evil and the supernatural. Science is nothing but a fallacy, according to him. Therein lies the appeal for some of a film like this. If you believe in spirits, Satan, and evil creatures, you might buy into his character’s point of view and thus, Eggers’s perspective within the film as a whole. Otherwise, a lot of what is on display here seems pretty silly.
Nosferatu opens theatrically on December 25th.