Movie Review: Nosferatu

2024 has proven to be another great year for movies, which made it very hard to whittle them down to a few dozen highlights (you can see what they are here). It’s a shame that Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake didn’t come out just a little bit sooner, as it would have easily earned a spot on that list, and is likely going to join a couple of them as some of my all-time favorites.

Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) has recently married estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and is enjoying her new life in the town of Wisborg, Germany. Eager to provide the best life he can for his new wife, Thomas accepts a job that requires him to travel to the remote country of Transylvania to finalize the sale of a crumbling mansion to the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). Ellen doesn’t want him to go, fearing that the journey will lead to tragedy, but he needs the money and so leaves her with his friend Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin).

When he arrives at a village near the Orlok estate, the locals try to warn him against going in, but he is determined to succeed at his task and ignores their pleas. Upon meeting the Count, he rapidly begins to regret his decision, finding the man’s disturbing visage and threatening presence understandably frightening.

Meanwhile, back in Wisborg, Ellen has begun experiencing violent seizures which lead Friedrich to call upon Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson). When he finds himself unable to cure the young woman, he in turn brings in the controversial Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) whose studies of the occult lead him to (correctly) assert that something supernatural is to blame. Friedrich is loath to believe such things, but events in town begin rapidly spiraling out of control and their time to act is running out.

Nosferatu is a consistently stunning film to look at. Working with his usual cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and production designer Craig Lathrop, Eggers brings to life a stark but sumptuous vision of old Europe, awash in shades of gray that is simultaneously beautiful and foreboding. The attention to visual detail is remarkable, right down to the font choice on the occasional subtitles.

Depp and Hoult shine as the couple at the center of the story, with a connection that feels real, but it’s when their lives take increasingly tragic turns that they show their true capabilities as actors. Skarsgård is the real standout though, giving a remarkable performance even underneath layers of makeup, and reminding us that vampires were originally something to be feared rather than swooned over. It’s a shame the Academy Awards don’t often bestow favor on this type of role, as he is deserving of at least a nomination.

Adapted from Henrik Galeen’s original movie of the same name, which itself was an illegal rip-off of Bram Stoker’s hit novel Dracula, this is a classic tale of terror retold in a fashion that will keep modern audiences engaged while still retaining the gothic atmosphere of its sources. Eggers is uninterested in using jump scares or gore to shock the audience (though there is certainly some violence here), instead he artfully deploys skin-crawling uneasiness and looming dread to keep us on edge. Combined with a memorably evil villain, it makes Nosferatu one of 2025’s smartest, scariest, and best films. ★★★★★