On Christmas Day 2024, a time usually full of joy and cheer, a chilling gothic horror movie called “Nosferatu” was released to theaters nationwide. Directed by Robert Eggers, this movie is a remake of the much older film, the 1922 film “Nosferatu: a Symphony of Horror.”
In the movie, Nicholas Hoult plays Thomas Hutter, and Lily Rose Depp plays Ellen Hutter. The movie is rated R and is 2:12 long.
When I first watched the film in theaters a day or two after it came out, I was excited to see it. I hadn’t seen the movie it was based on, but I love anything with vampires in it so I got all dressed up and went to the movie theater. However, I left with a sense of disappointment.
I, among many others, found it hard to understand the plot throughout the movie. One of my biggest issues is that the pacing felt off and it was hard to tell what the characters were thinking sometimes.
As the story goes, there’s Thomas and Ellen Hutter, a recently married couple in 1838 Germany. Ellen has been haunted by a shadowy figure since she was a child, whom she says later she had a relationship with. The nightmares stopped for her when she met Thomas, but now, many years later, they’re returning, and she tells her husband she’s having visions of death. Thomas reassures her before heading off to close a deal to get a mysterious Count from Transylvania.
After days of travel and many strange encounters, he finally gets there and finds a horrifying, decrepit castle with Count Orlok waiting for him inside. After an uncomfortable meeting, Thomas signs a contract that he thinks is for the house he’s supposed to sell. Back at home, Ellen receives messages from Orlok, the one who’s been haunting her dreams, saying that he will find her.
Staying the night upon Count Orlok’s request, Thomas awakens to strange things in the middle of the night. After he investigates, he finds Count Orlok sleeping in a coffin in an empty room of the castle, prompting Orlok to chase him to a dead end where he attacks him. When Thomas awakes the next morning lying on the floor, he makes his way back home where he tells Ellen she was right.
The whole time he’s been gone, Ellen has been dealing with nightly episodes of violent shaking, gasping, and sometimes sleepwalking. The doctor in charge of her had just been upping her dosage of medicine, and deeming it hysteria. Eventually, with no other cure, the doctor calls in an old friend known as Dr. William Siever to talk to Ellen. Even though he was ostracized from the scientific community for unorthodox methods, the other doctor believes he’s the only one who would know what’s going on.
At this point, Count Orlok has made it to Germany from Transylvania and is starting to affect the town while he’s looking for Ellen. The situation worsens as a plague breaks out and Ellen’s condition remains. Knock, Thomas’ boss is also revealed to be a minion of Orlok, which is why Thomas was sent to see Orlok in the first place.
After searching through folklore, Siever finds out that the only way to stop all of this is to let Orlok have Ellen as he wants. For this, Ellen will have to spend a night with the Count but her life can not be preserved, and she has to die. Thomas is deeply troubled by this, and Ellen sends him off in an attempt to find another way. What she actually does is trick him into going away so that she can sacrifice herself to end the plague. When she does, Count Orlok is burned to death in the sun and Thomas enters the room to find her lying dead, peacefully.
While I was watching the movie, I didn’t get all of that story the first time around. I was confused about all the different characters, what was happening with Knock, and the relationship between Orlok and Ellen.
By the end, I was left feeling glad that the movie was finally over. To me, I feel like the first half of the movie dragged on a long time because it was just these uncomfortable scenes of Ellen over and over again having these night terrors, but no one did anything to help her except give her more medicine which wasn’t helping.
The second half of the movie went by quickly, but it was full of just uncomfortable scenes that felt unnecessary and over the top. Even if they were trying to make the viewer uncomfortable, it just makes me not want to watch the movie anymore, it doesn’t make me think.
Another thing in the latter half of the movie that I have an issue with is the reveal of Count Orlok. I feel like none of the scenes where you can see his full figure are scary like they’re trying to be. His being a rotting (sometimes naked) corpse with a giant mustache just immediately took any fear I had in the first half away.
I didn’t really like the movie, and it didn’t resonate with me all that much. But some things I believe it did well. For example, I think Ellen and her friend Ana have good chemistry together. Ana was there for Ellen through all the night terrors, and even though she tried to tell Ellen that her visions and terrors were nothing to worry about, she was with Ellen up until her end when she herself was taken by Orlok.
Ellen herself is also really interesting to me. Even in a society where women are mostly seen as wives, it feels like she has power in the movie. She’s the only one who knows what’s happening for a while, which makes everyone around her seem like an obstacle.
The way Ellen is treated as a woman who is seeing crazy things and having these terrible nightmares also feels very real. Although we’ve come a long way, I feel like a lot of people still treat women like they’re being overdramatic and how Ellen is being treated isn’t just fiction. I like how the movie was made so that you can tell she’s not crazy, everyone just thinks she is. I think it’s really important to show that in film. Hutter felt secondary to Ellen at some points too which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing.
Secondly, my favorite thing of all was the cinematography of it. I have seen countless compliments from other people all over the internet about this, too.
The opening scene being all grey and at night added to the horror. I also just appreciate how beautiful the outside shots look.
One thing that particularly scared me was Thomas’ journey to go see Count Orlok. I think all of the shots were really well done, especially when he stayed in a village for the night to see a strange ritual going on outside. The ritual that was happening was so strange to an outsider like Thomas or even the viewer that it was just plain unsettling.
There were also some very beautiful scenes on Thomas’ journey, like when he comes to a crossroads and he’s backlit and there’s this carriage approaching him that’s going to pick him up and take him to the castle. It’s scary but in such a whimsical way. The blue light of the scene, the cold, and the framing of the shot as Thomas stands in the middle of the clearing so terrified of what’s coming at him, but also curious. All of these things really made the scene feel really surreal and dream-like, and I think that was my favorite scene probably.
Overall, I think Nosferatu is an alright film, it’s an interesting watch for fans of horror but I wouldn’t say I got anything out of it. I watched a lot of ending explained videos on YouTube, but it just felt too all over the place. The movie didn’t make me think either. If anything, I think it should be remembered for its amazing and beautiful cinematography, but the plot felt mediocre.
