- Nosferatu stars Bill Skarsgard and Lily-Rose Depp
- It is director Robert Eggers’ attempt at remaking the 20s classic
- The film is getting rave reviews
Nosferatu finally hit cinemas on Christmas Day, marking the debut of one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year.
However, UK viewers will have to wait a bit longer as it is due out on New Year’s Day, 1 January 2025.
Loosely based on the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, it tells the tells of story of the vampire Count Orlok and how he prays on the wife of the estate agent trying to find him a home.
Orlok is brought to life by Bill Skarsgaard while Lily-Rose Depp plays Ellen Huttler, the spouse of Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas. The cast also includes Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
The movie is widely considered to be a decade-long labour of love from director Robert Eggers. He made his directorial debut with the 2015 film The Witch. It was then followed up by 2019’s The Lighthouse and 2022’s The Northman.
What are the critics saying about Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu?
The Hollywood Reporter labelled the remake “exciting, repulsive and beautiful in equal measure”. They also noted Eggers’ years-long commitment to bring it to the big screen was palpable.
Others were less full of praise for the film, such as Variety, who acknowledged the film’s impressive and thoughtful visuals but felt the story had “been defanged, relying instead on long claws that cast ominous shadows over the land”.
The Guardian compared it heavily to the 1922 original, dubbing the 2024 revamp “more stylised, more studied, but less insidiously frightening than he needs to be.”
“There’s hardly a millisecond of this movie that isn’t measuring the distance between people and the darkness they disavow within themselves,” claimed IndieWire in their positive review. They were particularly full of adulation for Depp and Skarsgard.
According to TimeOut, Eggers’ go at the story is ” more complex and layered than in previous versions” and another example of how 2024 has been a great year for the horror genre. Other cited exemplary titles of the year which included the Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley flick The Substance.
What has Robert Eggers’ said about why he made this film?
Eggers has made no secret of the years of work he has ploughed into reimagining the 1922 silent film of the same name. In December 2024, he penned a piece for The Guardian outlining how it was his childhood dream to make this movie.
“For me, the vampire must exist in shadow to have power. But it is the vampire’s ability to transcend death that will keep them for ever in our imaginations. The grave cannot contain them. The vampire will always rise again,” he wrote.
