Nosferatu
January 24 – 28
7:00 pm nightly
1:30 Sunday Matinée
14A — 2 hr 9min
2024 ‧ Horror / Drama / Thriller

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a cryptic, beautiful and unsettling experience: transporting in the purest way. The writer-director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman is a rare filmmaker who seems capable of putting his modern consciousness aside when telling stories. There are no metaphors or analogies, only uncanny things that actually happen. Witches exist, curses and prophecies are real, and a vampire is a monster with the ability not just to shift shapes and drink blood but distort the fabric of reality through force of pure evil.
Nosferatu’s key intention, it seems, is to rescue the vampire from its twinkly tween era and to return it to its folkloric roots. The story feels as if it’s being told by the vampire himself, or one of his victims. A low, rumbling, moaning sound is a constant presence on the soundtrack. The camera flies or drifts or floats towards castles, through hallways, and into rooms where people are tossing and turning in the grips of nightmares. A giant shadow falls across a painterly 19th century German and Eastern European landscapes that simultaneously look real and like miniatures.
Technically and logistically, this movie is an awesome achievement. The wind, the rain, and the darkness seem to do Nosferatu’s bidding. The force of the monster’s unknowable malevolence seems to distort the movie itself, making it shudder and break down. It’s made with the most modern filmmaking technology but feels like an artifact from another century, like one of those inscribed tablets that adventurers find in a tomb and insist on translating aloud even though there’s a drawing of a terrifying demon on it. Nosferatu has its share of gruesome shocks. And after so many years of cool teen vampires, it’s refreshing to see a horrible old vampire again.
What really separates Eggers’ Nosferatu from the flock is how deeply it explores the images and themes of vampire lore. There aren’t many Dracula films that give you so much to sink your teeth into. This is not a film for the squeamish, and it has not only the bloody violence one would expect from a vampire movie but adult themes and elements like sexuality, the nature of evil, religion vs. the occult, and other disturbing facets that will not be for all. But if you don’t mind this and are hungry for a smart, human, terrifying adult movie, Nosferatu is a must-see.
Robert Eggers
Starring:
Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe