Robert Eggers
Nosferatu

LA RECENSIONE

This NOSFERATU is a bit of a dud.

It can't even hold a candle to those from Murnau and Herzog and it's worse than Coppola's kitsch DRACULA (which is saying something).

I'm puzzled, I'm inclined to believe that the film was conceived and edited as a clever marketing maneuver, just to make money. But then I think, no, it can't be like that... Eggers is an AUTHOR, his The Witch was a great film, The Lighthouse was interesting, I haven’t seen The Northman yet.

So, he and his crew must have believed they were doing well, that they had churned out a great film. It is not at all like that. Oh, the scenic setup is there: the right set design, the solemn scary music, a handful of jump-scares placed at the right points.

Eggers' Nosferatu is a beautifully dressed woman who, as soon as she opens her mouth, deflates you. The film turns out to be flat, monotonous, at times boring. This time Nosferatu is on-steroid. Muscular, dirty, mean, and with a mustache! He speaks very slowly with a cavernous voice, wheezes and hisses, his gaze steady and threatening, a real tough guy.

What is lacking is the epic, the emotional involvement, the immense pain of the undead and his inseparable bond of love and death with the beautiful Ellen (Lily Rose Depp) who miserably loses the comparison with Herzog's immense Isabelle Adjani, not to mention the vampire, here played by Bill Skarsgård, totally outclassed by the giant Kinski. Murnau? I don’t even want to name him. Everyone is indebted to him, and all those who have tried to engage with the role have inevitably “leaned” on such a master. I know the story well having seen Murnau, Herzog, and Coppola's Nosferatus at least twice if not more. And so I had the sensation of déjà-vu, of copying, I did not detect any original elements, and that's what it should have aimed for, especially since you’re dealing with material known and handled divinely by those who preceded you. Instead, he thought that technique would be enough, the right shot, high-level photography, a Willem Dafoe on the ramparts who doesn't even believe in it himself… I saw him as if in a trance, thinking about my own business, waiting resignedly for the end of this bland and useless film that neither engages nor excites.

Enough, I won't go on any longer, a bad review, after all, doesn’t need any long explanations.