Robert Eggers’s deeply enriching “Nosferatu” (2024), a darker and more devastating retelling of Dracula in fierce longing and yearning. Eggers’s production adapts the 1922 silent horror film of the same name. The film follows a newly-wedded couple, Ellen and Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp) as they abruptly separate when Thomas’s boss enlists him on a journey to Transylvania. Working for an estate company, Thomas has to ensure the sale of an abandoned house, purchased by Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård).
As Thomas ventures to Transylvania, townspeople warn him of the evil residing in Orlok’s residence. Orlok slowly reveals himself to be the Nosferatu (The Vampyre): a dead body walking among the living. His exceptionally dark spirit is rebuked and feared in ancient Romanian culture. The original 1922 story depicts Orlok as an immortal warlock, resurrected by the devil. Orlok can manipulate and control animals, illustrated through the rats and wolves seen in the film. After forming an intimate relationship with Ellen a few years prior, Orlok lures Thomas away to reclaim her as his own.
The film’s beginning establishes themes of deep loneliness and passion. As the camera fades into a crying, teenage Ellen, she cries out in despair, asking for “tenderness.” This scene begins her intimate connection with Nosferatu as he decidedly takes her as his lover. The movie employs various techniques to depict Nosferatu’s spiritual nature, though still induced in carnality and pleasure. These moments are subtle — for example, our introduction to Nosferatu’s body begins with an ethereal voice spoken into the depths of Ellen’s soul, manifesting itself as shapes within shadows. In reference to the 1922 film, the audience sees his silhouette as a shadow in the curtain.
Nosferatu and Ellen’s carnal relationship begins as we see Ellen writhe in pleasure. Soon, the audience becomes increasingly more disturbed, as she demonically vibrates, caressing an invisible entity. But, these intentional choreographs allow us to understand the spirituality of her relationship with Nosferatu. He lives in her dreams, in her thoughts, and in her very soul. He has possessed her, living inside of her, in a way similar to the passion between lovers and partners. Yet in their intercourse, the darkest aspects of Ellen’s soul become enthralled by Nosferatu’s dark spirit.
Passion is equally important to Ellen and Thomas’s marriage. Broadly, the two have a sexual relationship. Ellen even admits that he saved her from her fascination with Nosferatu, or “abated her shame.” He reduced their forbidden intimacy, and suppressed the dark side brought out by him. There is deep love between them, purer than her relationship with Orlok. In a sense, Ellen contains both good and evil. Nosferatu enlarges Ellen’s darkness, while Thomas aids Ellen’s purity. In his absence, the possessed aspects of her soul take over. Without Thomas “[she] will become a demon.”
Even willing to die to save Ellen, Thomas feels just as strongly. But Nosferatu’s passion for Ellen is similarly fervent. From the first moment she calls out to him, he clings to their eternal communion. He grasps every remnant of her existence. Despite the powerful evil that lies deep within him, Nosferatu desperately wants to obtain Ellen, more than survival itself. He condemns himself to an eternal thirst that cannot be quenched without her. He “cannot be sated without [her].” It is this consuming passion that leads to his death. Enthralled by Ellen’s blood, he forgets to hide from the sunlight, leading to his demise.
This all-consuming passion and love persists in the relationship between Anna and Friedrich Harding (Emma Corrin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Friends of the Hutters, the Hardings’ story allegorically follows Romeo and Juliet with a twist: Nosferatu brings their untimely deaths, not fate. When discussing Anna’s unborn child, Friedrich says to Thomas: “I cannot resist her.”
This scene is surprisingly tender and romantic, given the chaos and turmoil surrounding the couple. Despite Anna’s apparent anxiety caused by Nosferatu, Friedrich repeats once more to his wife: “I cannot resist you my love.” Friedrich’s words ring deeply and intensely true, in the context of all encompassing love, weighed down by desperation. Their romance exists without comedy – it is a strong, brilliant love that illuminates the rich communion between souls that marriage brings. After Nosferatu kills Anna and their children, Friedrich devastatingly holds his dead wife in his arms, delirious with sickness by the plague, and says to her, “let this, your tender embrace, keep me now in bliss away from everlasting sleep.”
In every corner of Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu,” the audience sees gracious, intense, and unbridled displays of passion. The film exposes the destructive nature of love and the darkness that we inevitably accept. Our duality allows for desperation, but simultaneously, extreme vulnerability. Initially about a horrific vampire, Nosferatu ultimately ends with a tragic romance.
