‘NOSFERATU’ Review: Robert Eggers Crafts a Brilliant Grotesquerie of Dread-Infused Terrors

NOSFERATU

Rated R, 2 hours and 13 mins

Director: Robert Eggers

Starring: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney

With NOSFERATU, filmmaker Robert Eggers focuses his lens on female desire and repression, leading to tragic crescendo marked by gothic terror and woe. It’s bold, brilliant and brutal. It’s emotionally destabilizing in all its bewitching enchantments. And it goes harder than any other horror film this year. His adaptation – inspired by Henrik Galeen’s NOSFERATU screenplay and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA novel –  is a foreboding, ominous tale of a woman’s burdensome shame transforming into sacrifice and salvation. This divine dark delight incorporates breathtaking homages to F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece with thoughtful thematic artistry and skillful ingenuity. Housing impeccable, career-best work from both cast and crew, the auteur has crafted his own modern magnum opus from vestiges of the past.

When Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) was young and suffering from varying afflictions (like clairvoyance and lust), she unwittingly entered into a cursed pact with a devious demon. Whatever relief she gained by this witching hour visit proves temporary, as years later in 1838, the gifts she views as burdens – deemed by polite society and doctors as “melancholy” – begin to return. Now newly married to enterprising, wide-eyed Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), Ellen senses a dark destiny threatening her newfound wedded bliss. Her husband, on his first day working for Estate Agent Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), is sent away to a remote Castle in the Carpathian Alps. Their prospective client, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), needs to sign a contract to buy a manor in their town of Wisburg.

As Ellen’s agreed to stay with friends Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his loving wife Anna (Emma Corrin) and their two young girls (Adela Hesova and Milena Konstantinova), Thomas travels to Transylvania, where he’s exposed to superstitions and warned by local gypsies to beware of the Castle’s inhabitant. Yet it’s only upon his arrival to the Count’s lair that Thomas is made acutely aware of his grave mistake, placing his career ambitions over his own safety. His health mysteriously deteriorates and, back in Germany, not only has Knock gone insane, Ellen too is plagued by ominous premonitions and epilepsy. Concerned over his missing pal and Ellen’s outbursts, Friedrich consults Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson), who suggests bringing in an unconventional specialist on the occult, Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe).

Not one moment is wasted. Eggers digs deep into hidden layers within the narrative, hinting at stories we only briefly glimpse, from the unfinished marble flooring under Orlok’s sarcophagus (intoning he possibly got impatient and hungry during construction and ate the workers) to the Orthodox Nuns Thomas encounters, who clearly seem more practiced at their incantations than just that once. The foreshadowing of the Harding girls telling their parents they’ve seen and heard a monster in their room adds a dash of macabre humor as, the moment they’re introduced, we sense they’ll make a delicious little snack for Drac.

Other thematic ties dealing with obsession and blind devotion are reflected throughout, from Dr. Sievers following traditional scientific methodology surrounding female hysteria (to keep Ellen tied up, fashionably corseted, sedated and docile) to Herr Knock’s descent into madness courtesy of his cruel, unwavering faith in a toxic vampiric commander. There’s a pungent air permeating the picture as if God has abandoned his flock, prominently on display in the cross motifs like the crucifixes dotting the shoreline and hung for protection on the altar at the edge of Orlok’s property. Better are those tucked away in subtler aesthetics, on the shadows cast by window pane joints, on doors’ metal facetings, in God’s Eye captured shots of street and pathway intersections and on necklaces adorning the necks of believers.

Hutter’s trip to Count Orlok’s castle is one of the most spellbinding sequences in any film this year (let alone in quite some time). Eggers and his collaborators harness the power of deft sound design indoctrinating us to its hellishly hallowed grounds with the hollow silence of snowfall interrupted by the heavy hoofs gallop and metallic reigns clanging in chorus, screeching in this otherworldly chariot ride accompanied by Robin Carolan’s haunting, unnerving choral and symphonic score and Jarin Blaschke’s painterly cinematography. Craig Lathrop’s inspired production design, utilizing archways to draw the eye to its characters, augments its frightful atmospheric allure. Editor Louise Ford’s work runs in concert, adding a hallucinogenic quality.

Blaschke’s use of moonlight and candlelight is unparalleled, giving the picture a bruising, throwback look. The way the camera moves fluidly, panning in sequences where the characters survey their unsafe spaces feels palpably unsettling. The black recesses are terrifyingly dark. Exhaled smoke from cigarettes being smoked in parlors dances in the air. Linda Muir’s costume design is exquisite, adding textured fabric to characters’ lived-in fashions, deepening the context of themes. Orlok’s ornate, metallic threaded Cossack-esque cloak and fur hat speaks to a rich life that’s passed by – one he’s clinging to. Ellen’s delicate womanhood is exemplified in a flower motif woven throughout, frequently seen in her wardrobe as patterns on her dresses and in her bonnets, as well as in the lilac bouquet he gifts her and she tucks inside a locket for his overseas voyage.

Depp gives a spectacular, full-throated performance. She appears ghostlike in gossamer nightgowns, in spells of sleepwalking while illuminated by moonlight. She’s in total commanding possession of her body as an instrument of anxiety and sexuality, contorting it into grotesque, unnatural positions (in tight, binding corsets, no less) during frightening fits of hysteria. It’s almost as if her petite frame might break during these intense epileptic episodes, however, her restraint within the mania is masterfully observed.

Hoult is nothing short of exceptional, delivering a razor sharp performance, balancing on the edge of sanity, love and peril. His character arc is a feverish nightmare, nimbly negotiating the naïveté and terror-filled extremes. There’s a silent-era expressiveness he taps into, from the debonair stoicism exuded to the tears that stay welled in his eyes when he’s scared or sorrowful, never allowing them to fall until the precise moment.

Naturally, as the terrifying titular figure, it’s Skarsgård who provides the pure, sinister nightmare fuel in this transformative role. His likeness is more obscured than ever by prosthetics (revealing rat-nibbled ears, a dusty, age-spotted complexion and thick moustache) low-octave growls and Romanian accent, asthmatic gasps for breathe and imposing physicality. He’s genuinely unrecognizable as the decrepit, deceitful, demonic nobleman. His shadowy silhouette is creepy, a monster large in stature and weighted omnipresence. It’s a sight to behold.

Eggers builds tension and suspense from the start, infusing the piece with earned, legitimately horrifying jump scares that run complementary to the characters troubled psychoses. Some of this genuinely freaky imagery will never leave your brain. Don’t dare go alone as you’ll assuredly need to discuss this after the credits roll. It’s also worth noting that if you’re not afraid of rats before seeing this movie, you will be now.

Grade: 5 out of 5

NOSFERATU opens in theaters on December 25.