Words by JANE CROWTHER
Though it was released on New Year’s Day you may not have made it to the cinema to catch the latest potent fever dream from Robert Eggers – but you should make it your resolution to do so. Darkly designed to fill a big screen (it opens by descending an audience into pitch blackness and sounds of distress), the filmmaker’s reinterpretation of FW Murnau’s 1922 take on Dracula is a crepuscular, filthy and visceral vision of sexual obsession and the plight of women who speak up against predators. Yes, it’s about bloodsuckers and staking, but with current headlines it’s inescapable to not see a correlation between the claims of a young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) being dismissed and her realisation that only her own bravery will stop abuse.
Depp plays Ellen, a new wife to Nicholas Hoult’s solicitor in 1838 Germany, whose pallid complexion and nervous disposition are caused by the night terrors she suffers as a creeping, shadowy presence stalks her. When hubby is called away to attend to the needs of a client in Carpathia, a count ‘with one foot in the grave’, Ellen fears losing herself in the nightmares and moves in with friends (Aaron Taylor Johnson and Emma Corrin). Meanwhile, her husband undertakes the six week journey to the snowy mountains where gypsies warn of evil and Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) lurks in his inhospitable castle with nails like a Guinness World Record holder and a truly disquieting, fetid voice that is the aural equivilent of damp, decay, death. The fresh blood that willingly enters his home sets Orlok on a course of destruction to Ellen that takes in plague, exorcism and monster hunting courtesy of Willem Defoe.
Though the story may be familiar, Eggers’ reliably striking visuals are not; Skarsgard’s creature design is disgusting enough you’ll be sure you can smell him, while the cinematography recalls a Vermeer painting – characters often framed in doorways, tree-tunnels, gateways to heartstoppingly beautiful effect. Set pieces such as Ellen’s possession (Depp contorting herself, eyes as large as saucers), her husband’s welcome in Carpathia (thundering horse hooves in the snowy gloaming) and a city laid waste by disease are grotesque, gorgeous, grim. The detail of costume, set design and sound is richly layered, while Eggers’ cast are pitch perfect. Skarsgard is cornering the market in terrifying characters you can’t shake while Hoult’s terror in Transylvania is palpable. But the film belongs to Depp; as fragile as glass, tremulous and bruised – but also erotic, feral and ultimately, kickass.
Viewers who are not fond of rats or scuttling things might find Nosferatu intolerable, but for everyone else Egger provides a thrumming discomfort of terrible beauty that will haunt as certainly as Orlok himself.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Nosferatu is in cinemas now
