It’s been nearly 10 years since it was announced that Robert Eggers would be remaking one of the best horror flicks of all time in Nosferatu. Thankfully the long wait is about to come to an end, with the film starring Bill Skarsgård as its titular monster making its debut on the 2024 movie calendar on Christmas Day. It sounds like horror fans might be in for a pretty frightening experience, given that Skarsgård has said his Count Orlok is even more terrifying than Pennywise in It, who he played in the 2017 and 2019 adaptations.
First reactions to the 2024 Nosferatu remake seemed to support that claim, as critics were ready to sink their teeth into the movie, which also stars Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp and a host of other talent. Let’s see what they’re saying now that they can expand on their initial thoughts, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of Nosferatu. Eric Eisenberg rates the film 4 out of 5 stars, noting the irony but standing by his statement that Robert Eggers has breathed new life into the classic vampire tale, with help from a truly transformed leading actor. He says:
It’s Bill Skarsgård’s turn as Count Orlok that is the greatest achievement of Nosferatu. If it weren’t for the fact that the actor’s name is in the cast, one would be hard-pressed to identify him in the role, as it is a full and masterful transformation. His co-stars may not do region-accurate accents, but he entrances with a deep and rolling Romanian brogue, the words uttered from rotting lips beneath a thick, long, black mustache. He emanates control with his presence, but he is also very much an animated corpse.
Becky Darke of GamesRadar also gives the upcoming horror movie 4 stars out of 5, saying that despite its relatively straightforward retelling of a classic tale, the sights and sounds are stunning. The critic recommends that movie lovers see this one in theaters in order to fully experience the aural cacophony. Darke concludes:
The new Nosferatu is a success; it looks and sounds stunning, is packed with the vampiric horror you’d hope for from the director of such atmospheric works as The Witch and The Lighthouse, is beautifully performed and competently retells a narrative we all know and love. But perhaps this last point is also what stops it from being a perfect movie: it’s solid, but it does very little to push any boundaries of what could be done to bring the ultimate vampire story up to date.
Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com rates Nosferatu a perfect 4 out of 4 stars. Despite being made with the most modern technology, the movie feels like an artifact from another time, the critic writes. He calls it an “awesome achievement,” writing:
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 itself through force of pure evil.
Siddhant Adlakha of IGN echoes the sentiment of making the age-old feel fresh, noting Nosferatu’s scary and sensual approach. The critic rates the movie an “Amazing” 9 out of 10, writing:
Nosferatu is Robert Eggers' finest work, given how it both boldly stands on its own as a gothic vampire drama and astutely taps into the original texts — F.W. Murnau's silent classic and Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. This resplendent horror remake keeps the broad strokes of these vampire legends intact, but refashions them into a terrifying, candle-lit tale of bodily autonomy — or lack thereof — that challenges previous versions of the story (and their conceptions of female sexuality) and in which Lily-Rose Depp delivers a harrowing performance opposite Bill Skarsgård's unsettling, corpse-like villain.
Liz Shannon Miller of Consequence laments that Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been so thoroughly explored at this point that this movie hitting all the familiar plot beats results in “almost zero suspense.” However, it’s never not beautiful to look at, Miller says, even in its most grotesque moments. The critic grades the modern remake a B and says:
Nosferatu delivers exactly what it promised — a new version of a classic tale, told by one of our most technically accomplished filmmakers. And this is certainly a more explicitly sexy version of Nosferatu than what the original German film delivered 102 years ago. However, it otherwise follows its source material, as well as the paths laid out by other adaptations, so faithfully that its most original elements feel drowned out by the familiar. It’s perhaps the best-made Dracula adaptation to come around in a long time. But it never feels essential.
So it sounds like no real surprises are in store as far as plot goes, but critics seem to universally agree that Robert Eggers’ direction combined with Jarin Blaschke's cinematography and an ensemble of impressive performances make this worth the price of admission.
Horror movie fans have waited a decade for the Nosferatu remake, and especially after reading such positive things from the critics, it hopefully won’t be too hard to wait another few weeks. The film hits the big screen on Wednesday, December 25.
