Nosferatu

“𝔜𝔬𝔲.” Three days in a row, and I’m now going to do my best to rack my brain and explain what I loved about it. Nosferatu thrives in the darkness. It’s a gothic folk story to tell around a campfire. A story that villages would tell to explain why the plague has ravaged their home. A story of beast that is the embodiment of carnal lust and death itself.  Fear. Gone is the campiness of the classic vampires. Gone is the sexy scantily clad women rising out of a bed coated in blood red sheets and drapes. In its place we have shadows. A rasping, wheezing voice. A walking corpse. Rats. Terror. Death. And don’t get it twisted, it’s still sexy. Most of the indoor scenes were lit exclusively by candlelight. The sharp contrast between the shadows made every scene look like an art piece. There genuinely isn’t one single bad shot in this film. Orlok’s character is mostly shrouded in darkness until the final scene. Keeping him in the dark only added to how terrifying he was. His shadow was essentially a character in of itself. Eggars knows that the scariest thing possible is the unknown, and how the imagination will try to fill in the blanks. The first 30 seconds of the film is pure darkness, allowing our eyes to adjust and fully take in what we were about to experience. The entire cast brings their A-game. Lily Rose Depp contorts her body and her face in ways I haven’t seen since The Exorcist. The way the candlelight lit her face from under her as she smiled and convulsed made her seem otherworldly. The way she arched her back in such an inhuman way. Her fear. Her pain. Her lust. Nicholas Holt’s terror in Count Orlok’s castle was some of his best work. Aaron Taylor Johnson’s eventual breakdown was wonderfully executed. Willem Dafoe stole every scene he was in, and he was actually hilarious. I forget how well Eggars can do comedy, which is essential to balance the total dread. Bill Skarsgard, I was not familiar with your game. His performance as Pennywise was fine, sure, but his performance here as Count Orlok was genuinely incredible. Hearing that booming voice for the first time had me realize that I was in for something incredible. The Academy hates to give nominations to horror films nowadays but I genuinely think that Skarsgard and Rose-Depp should get some sort of recognition for this. They were fucking phenomenal. I genuinely thought that Dune: Part 2 was going to be my movie of the year. Nothing had come close to it. But with only 6 days left in 2024, Nosferatu swooped in and crushed it. Just a sucker for vampires, I guess.