Nosferatu

In the 1830s, estate agent Thomas Hutter travels to Transylvania for a fateful meeting with Count Orlok, a prospective client. In his absence, Hutter's new bride, Ellen, is plagued by horrific visions and an increasing sense of dread. Soon enough, they both encounter an evil force that is beyond anything they know.

I'm a big fan of Robert Egger’s films.

He makes interesting, good-looking, and creepy monster movies that feel both cutting edge, and also straight out of classic Hollywood. So far, his films include The Witch, the story of a family of white colonists in the 17th century wilderness who are being plagued by witches, which is based on actual testimony from court records of the time. The Lighthouse, the story of two lighthouse keepers driven to madness by isolation, which features one of the greatest discussions on the quality of dinner ever. And The Northman, a story of Vikings, murder, and revenge that inspired Hamlet, and like I said, I'm a big fan of all of them.

However, after naming his films The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman, I was disappointed to see that this film wasn't going to be called The Nosferatu.

Maybe that’s just me.

The eymology of the word “Nosferatu” is a little unclear.

It could have come from an archaic Romanian word for a vampire, “nesuferitu,” which means “the offensive one,” or maybe it came from the Greek "nosophoros," which means "disease-bearing," or it could maybe be a twist on vourdolak, which derives from the Slavic word "volkodlak," which means "wolf-fur,” which basically implies that someone is "wearing" a wolf's skin, which naturally sounds more like a werewolf, but maybe more accurately, it's actually referring to a kind of predator, a beast that is also a man.

Wherever it came from, it means Vampire.

Humans have seemingly always known vampires. The Mesopotamians had the Lilitu, demons who fed on the blood of babies, as did the ancient Hebrews. They also had the Alukah, a blood-drinking shapeshifter who had to be buried with its mouth full of dirt to prevent its return. The ancient Greeks had Lamia, night-time creatures that snatched children. They were the Shtriga in Albania, Vrykolakas in Greece, the Strigoi in Romania, and the Strega in Italy. Ancient India called them the Vetala, undead creatures that haunted charnel grounds, and drove people mad, killed children, and caused miscarriages. In China, the Jiangshi are vampires who, because they are stiff with rigor mortis, can only hop. Throughout Southeast Asia, there are tales of the Krasue, floating heads—usually young and beautiful woman—with their internal organs trailing down from the neck, who eat the placenta on a new born baby, and afterwards, steal any clothes that have been left out to dry.

Across the world, there are tales of demons and spirits, of things that live in the shadows, of creatures that feed on a living person's vital essence, who corrupt its victims, and dooms them to the same fate, all things that can easily be seen as the precursors to modern vampires.

Most likely, much like religion, monsters like this are designed to answer the unanswerable. Just, instead of it being questions like "What is the sun?" or "Why do we cut off the tips of our penises?" it's questions like "Why did Bob murder his entire family and then kill himself?" or "How come Karen is having sex with that guy, but not me?" When these kinds of things would come up, in order to soothe an agitated village, it would be declared to be the work of some undead creature, a wretched, cursed, and evil thing, and all they would need to then do, is to march down to the local burial ground, lead a virgin boy across the graves until he found the culprit, dig up the corpse, cut its head off, fill the mouth with garlic and roses, or maybe dirt, then turn it face down, drive a wooden stake all the way through its chest, the coffin beneath, and into the very ground itself, in order to nail the body to the earth, and maybe pin it down with a scythe or something too, then rebury it.

Easy-peasy.

After that, you can rest assured the evil is trapped in its grave where it belongs, forever, never to return again... until Jim catches Barbara having sex with Todd, and murders all of them and himself, and well... now somebody needs to go find that virgin boy again, and I really hope we didn’t use up all the garlic last time, because we got ourselves another god damn vampire outbreak.

Civilization ain't easy, people.

Some places in Europe would sever the newly deceased's tendons at the knees, rendering the vampire incapable of physically rising from their graves. Or they might place their cemeteries on the other side of streams or rivers, as vampires can not cross running water for some reason. Also, as we all remember from that one X-Files episode, it was believed that if you scatter poppy seeds, rice, or even sand, at the vampire’s grave, this would occupy the undead fiend all night, because upon seeing the mess, the vampire would be unable to do anything else but count every single piece, a strange association with OCD that is actually a surprisingly common belief about vampires and other supernatural creatures across the globe.

But despite the wide variety of long-held tales about wizened blood-drinkers throughout human culture, the term vampire didn't really come into common usage until the 18th Century, when some Eastern European folk stories caused a hysterical idiot panic to sweep across Western Europe. This resulted in a bunch of exhumed corpses being staked, and random dumbshits accusing one another of being vampires, even some public executions of convicted "vampires." So, it was kind of like a 1700s version of the Satanic Panic.

Or… a really bad time to be a vampire in Western Europe…

During this time, vampires were undead creatures that plagued their loved ones, wrecking havoc and death amongst those they knew while they were alive. These creatures often still wore the shrouds they had been buried in. Their teeth, hair, and nails were usually long and wild with the grave. Often times, chewing sounds were said to be heard coming from their graves. Most notably, they were usually described as bloated, and of a ruddy or dark countenance.

This last bit reveals the underlying root in racism and xenophobia lying at the heart of the legend. This is a villain that was clearly meant to be a stand-in for the masses of eastern European immigrants, many of them Jews, who were migrating to Western Europe at the time. These people brought with them tales of fairytale forests, huge wolves, and dark monsters, and every facet of them marked them out as the “Other” in Western European society. They brought with them, to cities like London, not only their languages and cultures, but that classic white people terror known as "miscegenation.” These vampires, with their dark complexions, drinking white people blood, seducing white men’s women, were monstrous metaphors for immigrants and the threat they posed to the sanctity of white homes. Each time a vampire crept lustily into the night-time windows—which had been thrown open by the women inside—it diluted the power and the vitality of the white bloodline. This is supremely terrifying, because there has never been anything that ”good” white people fear more than the idea of becoming a minority.

It wasn't until the early 19th century, when shame over sex and desire, not to mention women's sufferage, brought us the more familiar gaunt and pale vampire of our naughty gothic dreams, offering the world and eternal love, creatures who must be invited in before they can ravage you. The only thing that Western (White) culture is more of than racist is misogynistic, so the idea that a woman could not only be in control of her own sexuality, but with the deciding of with whom she would share it, really took primacy. In the end, the idea that a woman might freely choose not to fuck you, and instead decide to fuck someone else, and for no other reason than her own preference, was even more terrifying an idea to the fragile house of cards that is white male masculinity, than the idea of the dirty foreigner who is stealing her away from the safety and protection of her godly husband.

But I digress…

It was around this time that the myriad of different ethnic beliefs and ancient traditions kind of coalesced into the hodge-podge stew of myths and legends that gave us the vampires we know and love today. Now, in modern times, everyone knows the Rules when it comes to Vampires, and as Spike pointed out on the tv show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that's all because of Dracula.

“I'll tell you what… That glory hound's done more harm to vampires than any Slayer. His story gets out, and suddenly everybody knows how to kill us!” — William "Spike" Pratt, vampire, complainy-pants

It's true.

Vampires are immortal creatures who must drink blood and avoid the sun. They may not cast a shadow, or possibly they can become a shadow. They may not cast a reflection. They must be invited in. They must sleep in the dirt of their homeland, or maybe just a coffin. Or not. Sometimes they can fly. Sometimes they can control minds. Sometimes they can shapeshift, or control animals. They have all sorts of superpowers. But they are repelled by sacred grounds and holy symbols. They also have a weakness to salt, garlic, and silver, our oldest friends. Fire too. And a wood stake through the heart, of course, and also cutting off their heads, but to be fair, that's true for everyone.

So while it's definitely not the first popular work of fiction to feature vampires, it's simply undeniable... Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, as well as its unauthorized 1922 cinematic adaptation, Nosferatu, are the ur-source reason why the whole world knows about vampires.

It all started here.

In the novel, which is narrated through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles, the story begins with a young solicitor named Jonathan Harker on a business trip to Transylvania. He has business with the Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, and is to stay at the Count's castle. Harker soon learns that Dracula is a vampire, and after a couple of vampire orgies, manages to escape. Meanwhile, the Count moves to England, and starts feeding off all the good folks in the seaside village of Whitby. This includes Jonathan's fiancée, Mina, who, with her heaving bosoms barely restrained by her bodice, is kinda into it. But that shit is not cool, so a small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunts the vampire down and kills him for daring to touch a white woman.

Meanwhile, in 1922, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror was made. A silent German Expressionist film directed by F. W. Murnau, from a screenplay by Henrik Galeen, it is the tale of Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife of his estate agent, bringing a plague to their town. Despite changing all the names… Count Dracula becomes Count Orlok, Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray become Thomas and Ellen Hutter, Arthur Holmwood and Lucy Westenra become Friedrich and Anna Harding, Dr. John Seward becomes Dr. Wilhelm Sievers, Mr. Renfield becomes Mr. Knock, and Dr. Abraham Van Helsing becomes Dr. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, it was still clearly a direct adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, and an unauthorized one to boot, and not because they couldn't get the rights either, but because they just didn't care.

Francis Stroker, Bram Stoker's widow didn't take this lying down. She sued over the adaptation's copyright violation, and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film had to be destroyed.

But this didn't happen.

In a scene I imagine as not all that dissimilar to the stormy night when, as King's Landing fell in blood and fire before the armies of the traitor Tywin Lannister, the infant princess Daenerys Targaryen, nee Daenerys Stormborn, only daughter of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen, in order to escape the wrath of the Usurper Robert Baratheon, was smuggled away from the island-castle of Dragonmount, across the Narrow Sea, and to the relative safety of the Nine Cities… several prints of the film managed to survive. And in the years since, Nosferatu has come to be regarded as a classic of cinema, as well as a template for the horror genre. Because of the film, because of the book, Dracula basically became omnipresent in pop culture.

He is the reference point of all vampires.

Although, a fair share of the reason why is also due to how, in the 1930s, while Universal Studios was busy developing a Dracula film, they discovered that Stoker had failed to adhere to U.S. copyright law. This resulted in the novel entering the public domain in the United States really early, and this meant that anyone could use the story and the characters, in anything they wanted, in any way they pleased, and all for free.

So that’s exactly what a lot of people did.

And now here we are again, a new version of the classic novel, a story set in a time when people wore a ridiculous amount of clothing, maybe didn’t have flush toilets, definitely didn’t have deodorant, the asylums overflowed, vampires were real, and people suffered from “the vapors” regularly, for a tale of sexual repression, shame, xenophobia, and the dreary prudery of Christianity.

The year is 1838.

The story actually begins a few years before that, with a young girl named Ellen pleading to be eased of her loneliness. Her cries catch the attention of a mysterious creature, who makes her pledge herself to him eternally.

A few years later, Ellen has gotten married to Thomas Hutter in Wisburg, Germany. Thomas’s boss, Mr. Knock, has given Thomas the task of selling a decrepit old manor to a mysterious and reclusive foreign buyer named Count Orlok. If he can complete the sale, it will mean a huge commission, and he and Ellen both dream of moving out of their little apartment to a house of their own.

But Ellen is wary. Haunted by both horrible nightmares, and also graphic sex dreams, she begs Thomas to stay. But the money is just too good. He leaves her in the care of his wealthy friend Friedrich Harding, and Friedrich’s wife Anna, along with their two young daughters, who really… put up with a ridiculous amount of bullshit while they’re doing Thomas the favor of keeping an eye on his incredible handful of a wife.

Anyway, it turns out… Transylvania is real creepy.

Every single mile and every single moment, creepy as hell. On the way, Thomas witnesses some very threatening and unfriendly locals exhuming and staking what might have been vampire in its grave. Then the following morning, the whole village, not to mention his horse, are gone. Completely gone. The whole place is empty. Where to? Why? Who knows, but it’s creepy. Thomas, all alone and now on foot, is forced to walk the rest of the way, through the creepiest forest ever, until a seemingly unmanned magical carriage meets him on the road, which he then climbs into, and it takes him to Orlok's creepy castle.

Whole lotta Red Flags here…

Then, as the terrifying cherry atop this creepy sundae, Count Orlok is the definition of menacing and off-putting. He looks like a mean hillbilly methhead cancer victim who’s been crossed with a rabid wolf. He lives in squalor and gloom, amongst ruin and cobwebs.

Thomas accidentally cuts himself during dinner, and gets woozy and blacks out. The next morning, there’s bite marks on his chest. The Count also takes the locket Thomas wears with a lock of Ellen’s hair. He also glamours Thomas, and gets him to sign a document that the Count claims is for the sale of the decrepit old manor in Germany, but is clearly some kind of occult contract, either for Thomas’ soul, or the possession of his wife Ellen, but probably both. Trapped, fading in and out of reality, being regularly fed on by Orlock, Thomas finally manages to leap from the castle walls for the river far below, and washes up near an Orthodox Church, where the nuns shelter and heal him.

Orlok figures well... that’s that, and then he sets sail for Wisburg on a ship full of plague-rats, using the crew as juice boxes along the way.

Ellen, meanwhile, is having a difficult time.

Her seizures, sleepwalking, and manic episodes have gotten so bad, she must be tied to the bed, where she strains against her restraints, her sweat dampening her nightie, and nothing that her doctor, Dr. Wilhelm Sievers, does is helping. Sievers consults with his former mentor, Albin Eberhart Von Franz, a formerly renowned Swiss scientist, who has been ostracized for his occult beliefs. Von Franz believes Ellen is under the spell of a demonic, plague-bearing vampire.

Got it in one, Dr. Von Franz.

Mr. Knock, meanwhile, has taken a bit of a turn, and has been recently been institutionalized for killing and eating sheep raw. Sievers and Von Franz search Knock's office, and he is revealed as a Solomonari in the service of Count Orlok.

A Solomonari is a wizard in Romanian folklore. They are black enchanters, a sorcerer most foul. According to legend, the disciples are taken from amongst the common folk, and they are given a magic bag that contains an iron axe to use as a lightning rod, birchbark reins for their mounts, a book of wisdom that is the source of their power and contains all their knowledge, and also a branch that has killed a snake. They then attend the Solomonarie, an underground school, where the Devil himself teaches, and the students avoid sunlight for seven years as they learn their dark craft of dragon-riding, weather control, and the “speech of beasts,” eventually becoming a kind of vampire themselves. Frankly, it sounds like it has a pretty great program, and I wish I had known about it years ago, because I bet I couldn’t gotten in with my ACT scores.

Additionally according to legend, the Solomonari are said to usually be red-headed, and often disguise themselves as beggars, often blind or disabled ones, in order for them to blend in with the populace and better work their dark mischief. For me, the interesting part of this whole legend is the way it seems to specifically allow for hatred of the destitute, the mentally ill, and the disabled, not to mention gingers, marking them as not just bad, but actively evil, which means that it is then righteous to destroy them, to do so would be acting in the name of God.

How very Christian…

Anyway, Thomas gets back to Wisburg just as Orlok's plague is burning through the local populace. Mr. Knock escapes the asylum, and escorts Orlok to Grünewald Manor. Orlok slips into Ellen’s bedroom that night in a totally non-creepy way, and basically tells her that while he isn’t interested in a relationship, he would still like to “possess” her. He assures her that her husband is totally cool with this, and then presents her with the document Thomas signed, claiming Thomas signed her over to him, and it is a binding contract. Orlok gives her three nights to submit herself to him willing, or he’s gonna start killing the hell out of her loved ones.

Three days later, as a bunch of their friends and loved ones now lie dead, Von Franz's occult research discovers that Ellen’s willing sacrifice really is the key to destroying Orlock, a piece of information that would have been great to know three days earlier.

Having no other option, Ellen agrees to ”give herself” to this swarthy foreigner from distant lands who desires her so much. To distract Thomas from Ellen's plan, Von Franz takes him and Dr. Sievers out on the town, and they burn down Orlock’s newly purchased old decrepit manor. They catch Mr. Knock there, and put him down too.

But since Orlok isn’t there, Thomas sees through Von Franz’s clever ruse and rushes home, only to arrive too late. Ellen has called Orlock to her bedroom, and she kept him there “drinking her blood” all night long (all night), ooh, yeah (all night), all night long (all night) oh yeah, and the sunrise kills him. Thomas can only hold Ellen's hand as she dies, covered in Nosfera—poo.

Nosferatu is all homage, obviously, but it isn’t just drawing from the original 1924 film, as well as Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula too, of course, but at times, it is also nodding to the 1931 Tod Browning directed (who also directed Freaks, one of the greatest films ever made) film starring Bella Lugusi (the man who set the mold, as far as Dracula in pop culture is concerned). It also clearly draws some inspiration from Francis Coppola’s underrated, star-studded Bram Stoker’s Dracula—which of course featured Winona Ryder running in a practically see-through nightgown—all of which is used to create a surreal fantasy world of close buildings and warrens of alleys, dark forests, and darker castles, and a monster whose giant shadow reaches menacingly across the face of the world.

It’s a beautiful and stark film, like a Renaissance painting and a twisted funhouse all at once, made all the stranger by the fact that Nicolas Hoult has played Renfield before, and is now Thomas Hutter, and Willem Dafoe is playing Dr. Von Franz in this film, but has also played The Nosferatu in Shadow of the Vampire. Of course, Dafoe’s version of the Nosferatu was a portrayal of the Max Schreck performance from the 1922 film, and it was great, he got nominated for it even, it's just nothing like the Bill Skarsgard version of the Nosferatu in this film.

Here, Orlok speaks Dacian, a dead tongue, of which only the barest of scraps remains, in a deep and rumbling voice. Dacian sounds like the Black Speech of Mordor, and was once spoken in the country of Dacia—which eventually became Transylvania, and is now Romania—by a people who were killed, scattered, and all but wiped out by the Romans in the year 106 CE. Here, Orlok actually seems to be undead. He looks gray and putrefied, tall, skeletal, and imposing, his flesh spotted and blotched with necrosis. His penis is… obscene. He is a creature of another age, long ago, long gone, repulsive, vulgar, a vicious and savage thing freshly pulled from the grave. You can practically smell the sickly sweet stink of his rot.

It’s incredible work.

This film got Oscar nominations for Production Design, Cinematograph, Costume, and Makeup and Hair. If it wins any, or all of them, it definitely deserves it.

Operatic, ethereal, atmospheric, yet earthy and grounded in its presentation, it is fair to say that this isn’t a “scary” film. Is it creepy? Yes. Is it deliberate? Definitely. Is it foul? Certainly. But for the most part, it doesn’t deliver the kinds of frights and jump scares that I think most people look for in a “horror” film. Just fyi.

But also, that's not the point of the film.

As a filmmaker, Robert Eggers generally doesn’t seem interested in giving wider audiences what it wants or expects, he’s clearly creating something specifically for himself. I really like that. Show me your visions, right? Show me your art. This film isn’t just an homage to a classic piece of cinema, it isn’t just a love letter to a root of all modern horror, and all monster movies in general, it’s a good story, it’s a great movie, but it’s really more of an art piece than anything else. To me, it seems like the point here was to create a thing of beauty. Creepy beauty, yes, but beauty nonetheless.

And it succeeded.

It’s not a judgement on my part on anyone else’s particular tastes, if I say that, honestly, this film probably isn’t going to be for most people out there. But also, if I’m being honest, I think that’s mostly because most people simply do not possess the patience needed, let alone the interest, or even the ability, to engage with art on its terms. The truth is, whether the film is actually good or not—as I said, your mileage may vary—most people seem to walk into films, especially horror films, with certain expectations firmly in their head, and they are often unwilling to accept anything else.

Okay, maybe there’s a little bit of a judgement there…

In the end, this was an incredible piece of cinema, dark and romantic, slow and deliberate, it is very clearly the result of cutting-edge filmmaking, and yet it feels like a refugee from a different era. Nosferatu is a fantastic watch, one that I think will only get better with a second viewing. So, yeah, I definitely recommend that you check this film out, if you haven’t already, even though I don’t really expect most people to actually enjoy it.

But still, you should try, it’s really good.