Nosferatu

Firstly, I want to start off by saying how gorgeous this movie is. My goodness, every single frame looks like a painting, and never once was I not interested in how this looked on the screen. Eggers has such a talent when it comes to shooting in low light, perhaps one of the only modern directors that is really doing something interesting with darkness in his films. To make something with such a limited color palette so visually interesting is so impressive. Throughout the entire movie, it is essentially some variation of these same colors, and yet he constantly finds creative and ambitious ways to show the story he’s telling. I adored the commitment to natural lighting in this as well. There were no flashy lighting setups or frames that felt overly produced. He has such a way with light that blew me away.

However, I don’t know if this is doing that much, except for being stylistically impressive. This could totally be just a personal opinion, but I didn’t find myself ever fully invested in this story as much as I would have liked. What’s so clear is how he is able to establish an atmosphere very early on and continue to hold you in this space throughout the entire movie. But I don’t ever think it amounts to anything all that interesting. I like this story being framed from Helen’s perspective, but I don’t feel like I really got to know her as a character. She was a surrogate for female sexual desire, and that resolves itself quite nicely in the end, but it felt like she was a vessel for this idea instead of being fully fleshed out herself.

He’s so good at creating this mood of darkness and unease and balances that so well with desire and lust, but I really felt like there was a lack of grit or real emotion throughout the entire movie, which kept me at arm’s length. It was just missing something, which made me less invested in this world. I think the film opens really strongly in this first act, where we follow Nicholas Hoult, who I believe gives the best performance in this film. But the more we cut back to Lily-Rose Depp and the other characters, it’s just not as interesting, and the pacing begins to falter.

I think a large part of this as well is that the story becomes a little bit unfocused and tries to get you invested in multiple characters, but none are as compelling as Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, or Bill Skarsgård. It also doesn’t help that I think Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin give pretty poor performances in this. I really didn’t enjoy most of the acting. It felt like people were in different movies. The tone that Eggers sets is very serious and somber and is perhaps at odds with the script.

I think somebody who managed to balance this perfectly was Willem Dafoe, but the others struggled, or it took me out of the film when they were on screen. Lily-Rose Depp is phenomenal in her physical moments and also her quiet moments as well, which is a large part of her character. I really do want to sing her praises for that, but in her more expository scenes, I really didn’t like her performance. It all felt a bit performative. I’m not entirely sure—it just seemed like people didn’t work together that well in scenes. It’s a shame as well, because she really is phenomenal in the main parts that she’s given, but I just wasn’t completely sold on her in the film.

I think this is a prime example of an incredibly polished movie that is a feast for the eyes and truly something that you would enjoy watching for its filmmaking. But sadly, it was polished to the point that it’s quite void of anything and a bit lifeless. Sure, by the end, the final shot is devastating and beautiful, but it also made me wonder why, in a story that is so rich with connotations, and a story which has been used to explore a variety of themes for as long as it has existed, this oddly felt like it had nothing to say. That sadly left me feeling very disappointed after this film, and I wish I felt more, I guess.