Film history has long been bad with Draculas: dozens of remakes, sequels and spin-offs of Bram Stoker’s groundbreaking gothic novel have hit the big screen over the years. But FW Murnaus Nosferatu is a rarer breed. The German expressionist film from 1922 was based on the plot of Stoker Dracula (with a few changes) and created the first horror film masterpiece, evoking a unique take on one of the genre’s raucous texts. Robert Eggers, the director of scary films such as: The witch And The lighthouseHe took on a greater challenge. Anyone can give us a new interpretation of Dracula, but only the most intrepid artist would attempt to interpret such a totemic version of Stoker’s creation themselves.

Case in point: The last director to really try it was Werner Herzog with “1979.” Nosferatu the vampire. This film was a loving, baroque homage to Murnau’s original, staged with dark elegance and starring a melancholic Klaus Kinski in chalk-white make-up as the titular fiend. Eggers, who always exudes a fidgety attention to detail in his fantasy nightmares, goes for something throatier. Be Nosferatunow in the cinema, is dark (in the truest sense of the word), damp and largely devoid of any charm; He runs far away from Stoker’s dapper, tuxedo-clad villain to present viewers with a Count Orlok (played by Bill Skarsgård) whom they can barely see. The camera itself seems to fear the grunting demon, which appears mostly backlit throughout the film.

Orlok is the most profound difference between them all Nosferatu and the classic Dracula: Murnau’s reinterpretation of the Count is more monstrous than urbane. His appearance changes the story from a dark seduction to a more primal affair, as he brings an ominous plague with him wherever he goes. Eggers heightens the sense of menace even further by plunging the audience into an immediate, inky darkness, a dazed atmosphere that he maintains throughout. The director’s persistent night keeps Skarsgård constantly in the shadows, his frightening makeup remaining hidden for much of the 132-minute running time.

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The obfuscation seems to be the point, an attempt to make the Count seem genuinely mysterious and unsettling again after a century of cinematic depictions. The structure of Eggers Nosferatu is essentially unchanged from his previous tales: Thomas Hutter (a sweaty, often shaking Nicholas Hoult) is a well-meaning real estate agent married to Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), a young woman prone to psychosis. Thomas leaves home when he is tasked with delivering some documents to Count Orlok, a mysterious aristocrat living in the Carpathians. There he has a deeply disturbing encounter with the strange man, who points to his own years-long association with Ellen – which, unbeknownst to her husband, has fueled her nightmarish episodes. Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) takes part in Thomas’ subsequent fight to save his wife from the trance of the lecherous Orlok. The occult scientist is the only one brave enough to diagnose Orlok’s mystical powers and propose a solution. Note: This involves sunlight and stakes through the heart.

Eggers’ dilemma is figuring out how to stay true to his material while adding a touch of originality. Without that, this return visit to Orlok’s crumbling castle would just look like someone playing with a beautifully constructed Gothic diorama. The new twists arise primarily in the portrayal of Ellen, whose frightening behavior resembles demonic possession. When the Count brings an apocalypse upon the city – including a swarm of rats and bizarre, incurable diseases – she insists that her mysterious psychic relationship with Orlok explains her bouts of delirium. But Ellen is initially dismissed as hysterical by the stuffy men around her, including her well-meaning husband and his noble pal Friedrich Harding (a haughty Aaron Taylor-Johnson). As the film progresses, Orlok’s connection to her becomes more and more threatening and intimate. Depp has a lot of fun with it and sends the entire high society into an uproar with her unbridled anger.

Orlok’s villainy manifests itself most clearly in Ellen’s mania, and as such Eggers seems to underscore the themes that Stoker and Murnau once toyed with: Dracula’s brash seduction and overt sexuality compared to the chaste, Christian goodness of his enemies. Because Orlok is so imposingly unsightly, Ellen is the facilitator of this exploration here – making Eggers his boldest risk with his source material. Depp’s trembling and eye-rolling performance is loud and intrusive. But given the general intensity of filmmaking, it’s fitting.

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Eggers Nosferatu To anyone familiar with the story, it can feel a bit muddy and long-winded. The director’s meticulousness transcends some scenes, displacing any real sense of fear. At times it seemed as if his characters were drowning in the beautiful, complex sets they were moving through. However, Eggers always manages to unnerve me, despite occasionally lapsing into boredom – he knows exactly how to evoke the simple fear of the unknown.