Nosferatu (15) |Close-Up Film Review

If writers’ copyright extended indefinitely rather than 70 years after the death of the author, the descendants of Bram Stoker, writer of the novel Dracula, who died in 1912, would still be coining it in, there have been so many films and other works based on his biggest hit.  

They never saw a dime though from F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film Nosferatu, which quite blatantly drew on Stoker’s plot but changed the character names to try to avoid paying copyright fees.. 

Werner Herzog did a remake of Murnau’s version in 1979, though just to confuse us he called his lead character Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski, who’s always pretty scary) but director Robert Eggers’ new version appears to be the only real big screen remake.  The story though is still a rip off of Stoker’s tale, the only difference being that Nosferatu himself, far from being sexy, as Dracula traditionally is,  is totally repulsive.  

One of the big pluses of this new version is the way it looks.  While shot in colour, a lot of the time the colour is washed out into almost black and white, while the locations, the sets and costumes are stunning in their period style detail.  The film is both very faithful in look and atmosphere to Murnau’s original, only better looking, bigger, with dialogue this time of  course and let’s be honest, in many ways better acted – well, less melodramatically anyway   

At the centre of the story is newly married Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), who is of all things an estate agent.  He’s despatched by his boss Herr Knock (Simon McBurney to the crumbling Transylvanian mansion of one, Count Orlock, described by Knock as “a very old and eccentric client, who has one foot in the grave”.  He kids you not.   

Orlock (an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård) has fingernails like an eagle’s talons, a face and body covered in half a ton of decaying flesh and a voice that echoes in his boots, courtesy of the miracle of sound technology.  Similar to Max Schreck in the original only more high tech. 

Thomas narrowly escapes with his life from Orlock’s lair to return to his young bride Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), whom he has left in the care of their friends Anna Harding (Emma Corrin) and husband, Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).   

What none of them know however is that as a foolish girl Ellen had been involved in some psychic jiggery pokery that woke Orlock from his centuries of sleep (don’t quite follow the story’s logic here) and now he intends to come and claim his bride.  

Should also mention here Willem Dafoe, who gives a lively performance as the expert academic called in to try to deal with the situation.

You can work out for yourself pretty much what happens next particularly if you’ve seen all or any of those other films.  Eggars’ version is, as I said, gorgeous to look at and well acted, though not ultimately that scary.   

But that could be because of a certain sense of déjà vu.   And conversely there’s always the argument that a good tale is well worth the retelling. Plus if you’re young enough to have never seen a vampire movie, this is a classy one to start with. 

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Released in theatres on 1st January