A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

Robert Eggers ‘Nosferatu’ is the second remake of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic after Werner Herzog’s ‘Nosferatu the Vampire’ in 1979, and the first English language retelling of this particular ‘Dracula‘ story. Starring Bill Skarsgård as the titular character (or Count Orlok as he is also known) and Lily-Rose Depp as the woman under his spell (Ellen Hutter), it is a dark gothic horror filled with striking imagery and a moody and atmospheric tone. It’s not really my type of movie, but it can’t be denied that it looks stunning and is something you’ll really want to experience in the cinema. Eggers isn’t a director I’ve fully connected with before and ‘Nosferatu’ sadly isn’t going to change that, but he is certainly a very good visual filmmaker and ‘Nosferatu’ will really connect with those who are fans of his previous work.

The story is heavily based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as the original F. W. Murnau movie was (for copyright reasons), and follows the dark effect a malevolent entity has on a small town in Germany, after he manipulates a couple of the townsfolk to bring him there from his castle in Transylvania. The man tasked with bringing Count Orlok to Germany is Thomas Hutter, Ellen’s husband, and the early sequences as he travels to and interacts with the reclusive Orlok in his castle are amongst the strongest in the movie in developing the unsettling and very creepy tone atmosphere that the story demands. This atmosphere continues once Orlok arrives in Germany, bringing a terrible plague with him, and much of the movie centres on the efforts of Ellen, Thomas and Willem Dafoe’s controversial philosopher to stop him. As this is happening, the psychic connection between Ellen and Orlok grows, leading to some frankly quite disgusting sequences (intentionally on the filmmakers part!).

The performances are pretty good across the board, with Lily-Rose Depp showing her talents in a better vehicle than the flop TV series ‘The Idol’, while Dafoe and Hoult are at home in this period setting. Bill Skarsgård is suitably disturbing and creepy in the titular role, albeit it’s firstly hard not to see him as the clown from ‘It’, and secondly, he doesn’t quite have the distinctive, freaky look that Max Schreck had in the original. All of this is to say that it’s difficult to fault ‘Nosferatu’ on performances or execution, and this is clearly a superbly crafted movie which will connect with a lot of people, but like the original it never fully grabbed me, so perhaps it’s just the story more than the filmmaking. A movie I admired more than I enjoyed, and I’ve yet to see anything from Eggers to show that his storytelling is as good as his undoubted ability to create stunning cinematic imagery (‘The Lighthouse’ coming the closest!).

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Robert Eggers

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

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5040012/