If there’s one horror trope that’s been used to the point of exhaustion, it’s the vampire. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could come up with an original vampire story after Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys and, god forbid, Twilight.

Robert Eggers therefore seems to have taken the sensible route of not trying to come up with an original story. As any vampire-afficionado will know, Nosferatu is a reworking of a story that first existed as a silent film, and then as a remake in the 1970s. Even though I wasn’t expecting anything new, I still went to see the film as soon as it came out. After all, Eggers previously directed films such as The Lighthouse and The Northman, which I loved, and I was curious to see how he would reimagine an all-too-familiar story.

Luckily, the film did not disappoint. It stays close to the original story – which, of course, was in itself a variation on Dracula – and does not try to bring anything radically new to the table. It’s this stripped-down approach, after so many films that pile new and often only half succesful tropes onto the vampire character, that made the film work so well for me.

Rather than trying to be outright scary or gory, Nosferatu focuses on deeply unsettling dread. The film is set in the 1830s, a time when Western European society increasingly thought of itself as modern and when the Industrial Revolution made profound and irreversible changes to traditional ways of life. But Nosferatu shows that superstition, spirituality, the occult, and deadly disease still lurk in the shadows, as do attitudes towards women that feel horribly outdated to a contemporary viewer.

Eggers does a great job at amplifying this sense of dread caused by the realisation that everything you have – be it wealth, power, or love – can be taken from you in an instant. What seems to be steady progress towards modernity feels, at times, like nothing but an illusion. This is particularly apparent in the scene where Jonathan enters Count Orlok’s castle. It’s a surreal, confusing part of the film with echoes of silent films and German Expressionism. In many ways I found it scarier than the film’s gorier moments.

As with any Eggers film, the film looks beautiful. Landscape shots in particular seem to be inspired by Romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich. Aspecial encore for the costume designer: the rich detail and lushness of the characters’ clothing added so much to the film’s atmosphere. And the sound design and soundtrack, while subtle, underlined the story’s creepiness to perfection. Those suckling noises will haunt me in my dreams.

No film is perfect, and Nosferatu’s ending felt a bit rushed, but it’s only a small blemish on a film that for me turned vampires into genuinly scary characters once again. I won’t spoil too much about Bill Skarsgard’s Count Orlok, but I will say that he carefully treads the balance between overblown and grotesque.

To round up, the nerd in me rejoiced when realizing that I’ve seen Nicholas Hoult in two very different vampire films recently – apart from this one, he did an outstanding, albeit much funnier, job in Renfield. I might compare the two films at some point in the future – they reimagine the vampire in interestingly different ways – but for now I’d urge any horror, gothic or vampire lover to rush to their local cinema and see Nosferatu on the big screen, where it belongs.

Photo by Simon Berger via Pexels