The tale of Nosferatu is almost as old as the horror film itself. It is all the more fitting that Robert Eggers, the horror virtuoso behind “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” writes and directs the 2024 remake of a classic vampire tale. The atmosphere of “Nosferatu” is just as stylish and desolate as Eggers’s other works, leaving viewers feeling cold and clammy by the end. The film has an excellent grasp on setting, from cobwebbed crypts to remote, muddy villages, and even the dark bowels of a sailing ship. The camera works in tandem with the script during tense moments, panning the camera achingly slow from one side of a room to another, only to feature a jumpscare somewhere along the way. 

The narrative at work in “Nosferatu” is about as gothic as it gets, filled to the brim with nightmares, bleak castles, mysterious magics, and simmering sexual tension. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) has been terrorized for much of her adolescence and young adulthood by night terrors, while her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) is trying to secure a better life for both of them by working at a real estate firm. Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) seeks to purchase some land in Wisborg, Ellen and Thomas’s hometown, but requests Thomas’s presence at his castle. 

While the newlyweds are separated, Ellen’s nightmares worsen and she becomes prone to sleepwalking and seizures, while Count Orlok feeds on Thomas’s blood over many nights in his castle. Ellen’s doctor Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson) consults his mentor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe) for help with his unusual patient. Albin reveals to Ellen that she has attracted the attention of the Nosferatu, and the film unfolds in a frantic race to free Ellen and Wisborg from this curse before it is too late.

The most iconic roles of the film are well-filled, with Skarsgård as a menacing vampire and Dafoe as an eccentric, cat-loving occultist. Depp vanishes into her role, fitting it well but not quite acquiring horror film icon status with her performance.

In the modern zeitgeist, the vampire is an attractive monster that tempts characters and audiences alike with their charm and sophistication. A vampire’s victim only realizes that they are doomed when it becomes too late. 

“Nosferatu” shares much in common with other works of vampire media, especially because of its fraught relationship with Dracula over the years. But where Count Dracula and other vampires feed, Count Orlok gorges himself on his victims’ blood, making grotesque noises that drive home how gnarly undeath is. Other vampires may be deathly pale, and Count Orlok is downright necrotic. Count Orlok’s unsightliness is part of what makes him so refreshing as a depiction of vampirism, after a full century of debonair vampires on the silver screen.

Ultimately, the themes at work in “Nosferatu” carry it beyond any director or cast. There is real existential dread at the heart of the film rooted in Ellen’s experience: a girl is so lonely that she cries out for company, and an evil being answers. She is plagued by his predation for her entire adult life and nobody believes her. When someone comes along who finally believes her, he tells her that the only way out is to die in the process of giving Count Orlok what he wants: her blood. In her nightmares she was wedded to death, fearful of the attraction that simmered there. Her nightmares turn out to be prophecy, as she lies dead beneath Count Orlok’s body and the sun rises over a city free from the vampire.

The self-sacrifice at the end of “Nosferatu” feels pessimistic after over two hours of doom and gloom for Ellen and Thomas, especially as Ellen is one of four named female characters—all of which are dead by the time credits roll. “Nosferatu” is modern in its portrayal of psychosexual thrill and the push-pull of being simultaneously revolted and attracted to something forbidden, but the punishment of death for engaging with desire feels like a narrative choice from another decade.

These considerations of the story of “Nosferatu” do not stop the film from being a delightfully horrifying time that capitalizes on excellent sense of setting and tone. Though some parts of “Nosferatu” feel stuck in the past, the film nevertheless captures gothic horror, and certainly some cult classic status down the line.