Eggers’ most commercial work has little to savour narratively, though it is backed by committed performances from Lily-Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgard, and immersive world-building, as the filmmaker regresses somewhat into self-parody and overindulgence. 

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If The Northman (2022) had already shown some signs of an overindulgent Robert Eggers coming into light, Nosferatu is very much the logical endpoint for a filmmaker who started out with incredible promise with such works as The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), but unfortunately has somewhat regressed into his stylistic brand of dark, brooding, gothic-like worlds of centuries past. 

Yet Nosferatu, his most commercial work, will likely earn him newer fans drawn to horror movies with that bit of elevated heft and artistry that regularly elude many Hollywood studio pictures. 

Eggers largely follows the plot beats of what had transpired before, notably Murnau’s eerie silent classic from 1922 and Herzog’s more naturalistic and organic 1979 version (both superior to Eggers’). 

His workmanlike approach to storytelling, however, doesn’t add much to the canon.  Hence, from a narrative point-of-view, there is little to savour, unless you are encountering the story for the first time. 

There is a more noticeable commitment to the film language of modern horror filmmaking here, be it jump edits functioning as scares, or the ‘excesses’ of actors’ performances—cue Lily-Rose Depp channelling Isabelle Adjani in Possession (1981) as a woman tormented by Count Orlok, or the titular Orlok himself as cunningly played and boomingly voiced by Bill Skarsgard. 

“Does evil come from within us or from beyond?”

However, one ought to recognise that these are amplified techniques (a continuation of what film scholar David Bordwell called ‘intensified continuity’) in order to appeal to the tastes of modern audiences who generally need more visual-aural stimuli to sustain their interest. 

The fact that Eggers’ films so far operate at a slightly slower tempo than the usual Hollywood standard also means he has to succumb to ‘intensified continuity’ more often than not, especially with a known quantity—and hence imbued with audience expectations—like ‘Nosferatu’. 

As curses, fears of the unknown, the tension between science and religion (and lots of plague-spreading rats) rear their ugly heads in Nosferatu, Eggers holds everything together like a seasoned filmmaker, though the film doesn’t quite land well as it draws to a close.  Some might even find it rushed. 

Or perhaps it could be the niggling feeling that after sufficiently terrifying audiences for the past two hours, the well has run dry and there is nothing more for him to offer. 

His next feature, already his fifth, will be his most critical yet—an opportunity for reinvention or a spiral into deepening self-parody.           

Grade: B-

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