When it comes to horror movies, I don’t scare easily. This isn’t a boast about my bravery; I’m simply desensitized. I grew up immersed in the horror genre, and I’m so devoted to horror movies that I’ve become mostly inoculated to their raw power. I still love horror — it’s my favorite genre — but I rarely ever get scared when I watch a scary movie. So when a horror movie comes along and actually gives me the creeps, I consider it an achievement. Enter Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” a movie that sent chills down my spine and made my heartbeat quicken. Eggers has pulled off something special: a gothic, ghoulish phantasmagoria that has the power to scare the hell out of you. This is all the more impressive due to the fact that Eggers isn’t exactly treading new ground here — he’s remaking F. W. Murnau’s classic silent film, which was, of course, heavily (and illegally) influenced by Bram Stoker’s immortal vampire classic “Dracula.” Eggers’ take on the material sticks pretty closely to the events from both Murnau’s movie and Stoker’s novel, and yet, the filmmaker creates something that never feels like a rehash or a regurgitation. The end result is stunning and scary, full of swooping, swooning, doomed romanticism and moments of pure, unblinking horror.
Eggers, who helmed “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” and “The Northman,” is a filmmaker seemingly obsessed with the past. All of his films, including “Nosferatu,” are firmly rooted in bygone eras, and the director has a knack for creating a sense of authenticity. I’m no historian, so I can’t comment on how “accurate” Eggers’ films are. But since all of his movies deal with the strange and the supernatural, accuracy doesn’t really apply, nor is it really important. Instead, what matters is that these movies feel authentic. As a filmmaker working with top-notch production teams, Eggers is skilled at telling stories that have a tangible sense of real history to them. “Nosferatu,” like all of Eggers’ previous films, doesn’t come across as a recreation — it truly seems like we’re somehow gazing back into the past. It’s tantamount to time travel. “Nosferatu” is set in 1838, and the costumes, the scenery, and the customs swirl about to create the world of the film, a cold, wintry world of certain death (the story is set around Christmas, complete with a Christmas tree lurking in the background of a scene).
Again, if you’ve seen the original “Nosferatu,” or Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake, or any of the many adaptations of “Dracula,” you’ll be familiar with the story beats on display here: an ancient (and foreign) vampire targets a group of young characters, bringing death and destruction in his wake. But Eggers finds exciting ways to weaponize that familiarity; we expect the story to unfold in a certain way, and we’re surprised when things are slightly off kilter. All of this is aided by a genuinely unnerving atmosphere, with numerous scenes that play out with the logic of a fever dream. There were multiple times throughout the course of the film where I felt absolutely dizzy, my head swimming, my senses overloaded with the nightmare world being revealed.