Horror film “Nosferatu” – mental anguish and slurping noises

The German silent film “Nosferatu,” made in 1921 by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, is now considered one of the most influential horror films of all time. The plot, a brazen rip-off of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” novel (1897), can be assumed to be familiar: Germany in 1838. The newly married Thomas Hutter, employed by a broker, is supposed to travel to the deepest Transylvania, to the dilapidated one Castle of an eccentric count named Orlok, who supposedly wants to buy a retirement home in Germany. But the obscure count, who quickly turns out to be a vampire, is actually after Hutter’s wife Ellen and travels to Germany with the intention of taking possession of her and sucking her blood.

The actor Max Schreck, who played the threatening vampire at the time, the tall “Graf Orlok” – physiognomically strikingly reminiscent of the current CDU chairman and in a way pointing 100 years into the future – certainly had his share of the horror effect. Just like Friedrich Merz has his in our time.

In the new interpretation of Murnau’s classic film, directed by horror film director Robert Eggers, who is known for his hyperrealistic style and is now being released in cinemas, the vampire Orlok is designed as a selfish tyrant and an authoritarian, arrogant disgusting package. (Again you’re thinking of people from federal politics!) When it comes to body design and look, a lot has been done to make the legendary figure appear as evil and repulsive as possible. What emerged was a pale, warty wreck with eight centimeter long yellow fingernails, a voluminous mustache (“Balkan bar”) and waxy skin, which also had open spots on its body and also showed clear signs of a rotting body. A kind of carcass on two legs. Once he has taken control of a victim, he sits astride the victim and sinks his teeth into the victim’s stomach or chest with a loud rattling noise, making a loud, annoying slurping and slurping noise. Sucking blood, we learn, is something that takes getting used to.

The vampire Orlok, selfish tyrant and authoritarian, arrogant disgust, is reminiscent of people from federal politics.

–

The soundtrack does a great job here, it has to be said. The worst thing, however, is probably the vampire’s voice and pronunciation, at least in the almost unbearable German dubbed version: the old Count Orlok snorts, gasps, wheezes, growls and coughs his way through the 132 minutes of the film so obtrusively and with a fake Eastern European accent that one is inclined to wish him a speedy recovery.

If you ignore the thoroughly terrible dubbing, which causes the film in the German language version to turn into unintentional comedy here and there, Eggers’ remake, whose aesthetics are very much based on the Murnau original, could be very successful: the artfully used one Low-key style that repeatedly makes parts of a scene disappear into the twilight and darkness; the sophisticated handling of light and shadow effects (the film critic Lotte Eisner once spoke of the “famous chiaroscuro of German films”); the direct look of the vampire or one of his victims into the camera, which is intended to shock the viewer. You quickly understand: This remake is, above all, a homage.

These techniques are combined with the attention to historical detail in the furnishings: the red brick Gothic houses from the 13th to 16th centuries; the narrow cobblestone streets and the dusty offices from Goethe’s time, where thick tomes are stacked on tables; the virtuoso use of the light sources of the narrated era (fireplace, flickering candlelight, torches). Against this background, the tableau-like scenes unfold, which are sometimes reminiscent of paintings by Jan Vermeer and Capar David Friedrich (by day) and revive the topography and motifs of the English gothic novel (by night): old castle ruins, crumbling walls, dark vaults, creaking doors, Rain/storm/thunderstorm, somnambulism, repressed sexuality, misunderstood mental anguish.

The American film director Robert Eggers has repeatedly been lavishly praised in the past for his distinctive style, the loving reconstruction of historical locations and the pedantic worldbuilding that gives cinema viewers an immersive experience. Whether it’s a historical folk horror melodrama (“The Witch”), a claustrophobic black-and-white psychological horror chamber drama (“The Lighthouse”) or a glossy Viking carnage (“The Northman”), in which carefully oiled, mud-caked half-naked muscle men hit each other in a perfect choreography and the fake blood sprays beautifully: production design is always tip-top. Once you, as a viewer, get stuck in an Eggers film, you are irrevocably stuck in it and usually don’t find your way out until the credits roll. The director once said in several interviews two years ago that he wanted the audience to “really immerse themselves in and immerse themselves” in his films. For him, it’s about “drawing people deeply into a world.”

In “Nosferatu” it is a largely nocturnal, shadowy world with strong contrasts, which uses numerous images and motifs from the Gothic novel and black romanticism. Occasionally there are even tracking shots right into the blackness, but again and again small concessions are made to the splatter and gore cinema: for example, when a vampire vomits gallons of red broth at the moment of his destruction, when a pigeon’s head is bitten off, slimy drool and saliva threads are shown in close-up or maggots crawling out of open wounds. Or when the young Ellen, female protagonist and Orlok’s chosen victim, occasionally writhes while screaming and violently convulsing during her waking dreams, and the way the production is staged leaves little doubt that William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1973) is being quoted here.

But the viewer is not completely “drawn into” the film cosmos. Despite all the successful attempts to establish a nightmarish aesthetic on a visual level, the sometimes whispering pathos and the predominantly bland, unambitious or turgid dialogues don’t exactly help to intensify this aesthetic. “How can I still cry (sigh) when all my tears have been shed?” Ellen asks at one point. And that’s not the only sentence recited unctuously while looking into the distance. Unfortunately, this kind of affected, solemnly spoken theatrical text can be heard in several places in this Gothic melodrama. “The film would like to be Murnau’s original, but Mel Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’ gets in the way,” commented the writer and film critic Kevin Maher in the British daily newspaper “The Times”. You can say that.

“Nosferatu – the Undead”, horror film, USA 2024. Director: Robert Eggers. Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult. 133 min., in cinemas now.