Like a lot of vampires, 'Nosferatu' sucks

Orlok showing pole can't save this bloodless iteration

Like an ancient vampire rising from his tomb, Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” is musty, drained of life, and here to suck. Okay it’s not that bad – but it’s hard not to be a contrarian when so many people embrace such an iterative, mediocre movie. Admittedly, it’s probably hard to do anything new with yet another vampire story.

There are over 200 film and television adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula.” There are so many versions of “Dracula,” in fact, that just LAST YEAR (!) Nicholas Hoult, a star of “Nosferatu,” appeared in “Renfield,” a lame comedic superhero spin on Dracula’s nasty servant. (“Renfield” wasn’t even the only bad “Dracula”-derived movie in 2023. Five months later came “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” an unwatchable mess adapted from a single chapter of Stoker’s book where sailors start disappearing as the Count’s coffin is shipped from Transylvania to England.)

Another “Nosferatu” star, Willem Dafoe played actor Max Schreck, Count Orlok himself, 25 years ago in “Shadow of the Vampire,” a fictionalized story of the production of the original 1922 “Nosferatu.” Director F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) comes to suspect Schreck might be a real life bloodsucker. It’s a nutty little movie about the ruthlessness of artists in pursuit of a vision disguised as a historical comedy that happens to feature a genuinely scary vampire narrative. Dafoe plays Schreck/Orlok straight, unexpectedly resulting in a performance that is by turns hilarious, chilling, and sad.

The Orlok of Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” on the other hand, is a grumbly voice emitted from a silicone mask, some silicone ribs, and a dangly silicone penis. He kind of looks like a decaying mashup of Hitler, Stalin, and Rasputin. Somewhere under all of that silicone is Bill Skarsgard, an actor who is better known for wearing special effects makeup than he is for acting. He’s not scary. He’s often difficult to understand. And when you finally get a good look at him, he resembles one of those displays at the Halloween Adventure store on Broadway.

Orlok is one of the few places in the movie where the design goes wrong. Eggers worked as an art director and production designer for years, and the look of his movies is his greatest strength. Like in “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” and “The Northman,” the sets in “Nosferatu” are ornate and vividly detailed. Many of the shots have a painterly quality. There are a number of scenes lit by only candlelight that are stunning. (These are undermined by a few other scenes where murky blackness has been digitally added, making everything look ugly, flat, and illegible.) Eggers is great at mood. Insofar as “Nosferatu” is a good movie, it’s a triumph of design over storytelling.

I don’t necessarily mind a triumph of design over storytelling. I would say the same thing about my favorite version of this story, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” from 1992. Francis Ford Coppola’s movie tells a nearly identical story to Eggers’. (Murnau couldn’t get the rights to Stoker’s novel in 1922, so he changed the characters’ names, moved the action from England to Germany, and called it “Nosferatu.” Stoker’s widow sued and most of the copies of “Nosferatu” were destroyed, almost lost forever to history. Later, Coppola would be inspired by “Nosferatu” when making his film, giving all of these movies a sort of Ouroboros quality.) But Coppola’s “Dracula” is baroque, colorful, sensuous, thrilling, and sexy. Most of all, it’s fun – despite Keanu Reeves’ bafflingly awful British accent.

There is no fun to be had in “Nosferatu.” (But there are lots of awful British accents on these German characters!) Everything is dark, grim, and morose. The performances range from acceptable (Lily-Rose Depp) to wooden (Skarsgard). Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Hoult’s friend comes across as a child playing an adult in the school musical. There are so many characters and so much narrative. Eggers struggles to keep pace.

Eggers adds a few good touches though. I particularly liked that Orlok commanded rats instead of bats. The way he drinks blood from his victims’ hearts, straddling and humping them, is one of the more sexualized depictions of vampire feeding. Unfortunately that’s about as horny as things get.

I always wanted Eggers to go bigger, get grosser, or make it weirder. Almost always he kept things subdued and dark. By the end, you can’t wait for the sun to come up.

“Nosferatu” is now playing in theaters.