Review: Nosferatu

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There have been countless tales of the count since the birth of cinema - but oddly, my favorite film versions of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" tend to be the ones with the name "Nosferatu." There have been some very good versions under other names - Tod Browning's 1931 "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi and Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," to name a few - but F.W. Murnau's creepy 1922 "Nosferatu" and Werner Herzog's brilliant and atmospheric "Nosferatu: Der Vampyre" remain my favorites.

Robert Eggers' adaptation of the Stoker novel has much more in common with these latter two films as it is artfully rendered and more cryptic than your average Hollywood adaptation of the story, although it veers off from the novel a bit (never a complaint in my book). There are some breathtaking shots here - the most memorable is the approach via coach through the Carpathian Mountains toward the count's castle.

There's not much of a point in describing the plot in depth here, since most viewers and readers likely know it. Of course, every version differs slightly, but suffice it to say that the film starts with Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) traveling to Count Orlok's (Bill Skarsgard) castle to make a land deal on a new home to which the count will relocate in Germany.

Meanwhile, Hutter's wife, Ellen (Lily Rose Depp) is having night terrors in which a voice - that of the count - calls to her to submit to its will. Without going too much into it, Ellen has long been tormented by the count, and not just due to her husband's visit to his castle. Orlok's coffin is transferred via boat and he kills all aboard before it reaches its destination. Once there, a plague overtakes the town and a local doctor (Willem Dafoe) recognizes that it's the work of an evil force.

There are some curious changes to the story. Instead of the Harkers and Van Helsing, here we have the Hutters and Albin Eberhart (Dafoe). The ending of the story is more tragic than that of the original novel. Eggers' film is certainly gorier - this film's Renfield character pulls an Ozzy Osbourne on a pigeon - and more sexual than Stoker's novel.

Eggers comes at the material with a painterly touch and the film is filled with gorgeous imagery. One of my favorite shots is of Nosferatu reaching his hand out of a window and it appearing as if it were devouring the entire German town in which he has relocated.

Eggers' work is primarily period piece horror films that deal with folklore and mythology. His debut, "The Witch," was an entrancing tale of witchcraft in the Colonies, while "The Northman" was a gory viking epic. My favorite of his was "The Lighthouse," a seriously weird mythological horror film set in the late 1800s in New England.

"Nosferatu" seems like a natural choice for the filmmaker. It might not be the greatest movie ever made about the count - that's a tossup between the Murnau and Herzog versions - but it's a unique artist's inspired take on a timeworn classic.