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In 1897 Stoker’s novel Dracula was published becoming for more than a hundred year the definitive text on vampires. 25 years later German director F.W. Murnau released his film Nosferatuwritten by Henrik Galeen, a script that was found to have infringed on Stoker’s novel. Despite the court ordering all copies destroyed, the fact of the international release proved a boon to global cinephiles and Nosferatu survived.
In 1979 Nosferatu climbed from its cinematic grave with a new remake starring eclectic actor Klaus Kinski.
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And now after another several decades Christmas 2024 brought us another adaptation by celebrated horror director Robert Eggers (The Witch, and The Lighthouse.) but taking care to credit Stoker’s original novel as well as the 1922 screenplay as source materials.
It is 1834 and aspiring estate clerk Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is dispatched by his employer to a distant client, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) leaving his new bride Ellen (Lilly-Rose Depp) with close friends (Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Emma Corrin). Count Orlok, the titular Nosferatu, harbors insidious plans to leave his isolated castle and feed upon the citizens of a modern city and is particularly drawn to the virtuous Ellen. Thomas, along with friends and associates is drawn into a battle against evil and death trying to defeat Orlok.
Robert Eggers delivers a dark, moody, and gothic tale of horror and evil beyond reason, with stunning desaturated color from cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. This is not a tale that utilizes a charismatic foreigner as a metaphor for sexual desires and repressions but one of an evil drawn from the dead that desires to bring death to everywhere it travels. Orlok unlike Dracula in most adaptations does not seduce, he feeds. He is not attractive but repulsive and when he is easily visible the Count’s nature as a walking corpse becomes revolting apparent. This film depicts the horror of being the victim of the Nosferatu and of the unending torment of being one. It is not accident that the tag line on the poster is ‘Succumb to the Darkness.’ We often talk of succumbing to a disease and that is never the desired outcome.
 Eggers slips between the world the characters inhabit and their dreams and nightmares so easily that the audience just as the poor cursed characters often cannot know what is real and what is phantasm.
Perhaps the consistently best director working in horror today Robert Eggers’ filmography is one of artistic success to artistic success here is hoping that addition to his massive talent Nosferatu finds the commercial success that studios desire.
