Nosferatu

Thankfully, not every actor in Nosferatu is miscast or bad. Taylor-Johnson is a standout in what is a rather thankless role. Friedrich met Thomas at university and came into money fast. The role is just here to exposition dump and complain to or about Ellen. Yet somehow, the actor is the only main character to come across as well-rounded and realistic. He’s so good, and I wish the film were about him and his family. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Even worse is that the bad isn’t just in the casting. The film takes place in Germany, and yet no one speaks German or even has a German accent (yes, there are a few lines the extras have that are in German, but virtually everyone speaks English). So why is it set there? It is just distracting and awkward. The original film is a silent, German expressionist title, so it made sense being set there. The 1979 version, from Werner Herzog, has one version entirely in German and another entirely in English. But that was also more than 40 years ago. All this English speaking makes one wonder if Eggers ever thought about how the people in Germany would talk. The answer appears to be no. It might seem odd to have an entire paragraph to gripe on this one little thing, but it is another entirely avoidable element that keeps audiences from becoming fully immersed in what’s happening on the screen.

“…the worst thing, by far, about Nosferatu is the direction.”

However, the worst thing, by far, about Nosferatu is the direction. Eggers uses the same style for every scene, no matter how important or mundane it is. Yes, long takes and one-shots are impressive, but they lose their luster when that is all that is on display. Yet the director makes everything, even something as simple as Ellen pleading with Thomas to stay and not go, into a long camera dolly forward, then a pan to either the right or the left. So if this is how the normal moments are captured, then how does the horror juxtapose against it? It doesn’t. Every scene looks and moves the same, so there’s no menace, terror, creep, or scare, as there’s nothing for it to feel like it’s interrupting. That interruption of the everyday by something sinister is where horror lies. By not invoking it, Eggers is literally unable to generate anything more than one jump scare (when Thomas finds Orlok in his crypt).

But not everything here that isn’t Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a total wash. The use of shadow is cool looking. The sets are massive and sprawling, populated by hundreds of extras. The costumes are also very detailed and rich, creating characters the screenplay fails to give dimension to. The score, Robin Carolan, is vibrant and atmospheric in a way the visuals want to be but are not. The focus on the plague brought by Orlok is an interesting angle, but not explored enough to be much more than mildly interesting.

Nosferatu is a dramatic horror romance wherein the romance doesn’t ring true, and scares don’t exist. The cast is full of talented actors, all of whom have been good elsewhere but, with one exception, don’t fit their respective roles here. The direction is samey throughout, no matter the purpose of the sequence. This means the horror is not felt as it’s not rubbing up against the mundane in an eerie fashion. The narrative has one interesting angle but never gets around to fully exploring it, meaning bland characters with no dimension trudge through a story with no stakes. This film is a disaster from start to finish, eliciting unintentional laughter and boredom and little else.