October Horror Movie Challenge: Nosferatu (2024)

 Tonight is a good one. I saw this near when it came out and was going to talk about it then, but I think tonight is a good night for a rewatch. Plus it give Bill Skarsgård a chance for a better movie than last night's.

Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (2024) isn’t just a remake; it’s a resurrection. Like the vampire at its center, this story keeps returning from the grave every few generations, and somehow, each time it reflects the fears and fascinations of its age. I’ve covered this story before, the eerie, expressionist nightmare of Nosferatu (1922) and Werner Herzog’s hauntingly romantic Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979). Eggers’ version stands confidently beside them, not as a copy or homage, but as a fever dream that feels both ancient and new.

This film bleeds atmosphere. Eggers’ knack for historical texture is on full display here, shadowed streets, candlelit halls, and the creeping weight of superstition pressing in from every frame. You can practically smell the damp wood and grave dust. It’s a gorgeous film to look at, but more importantly, it feels lived in, the way all great Gothic horror should. It feels like it was shot at the same time as the original 1922 version, only you are not watching a film from 1922, you are living in Wisburg viewing the 1890s from the 1920s.

The cast is exceptional across the board. Bill Skarsgård (who is becoming a bit of horror icon) gives us a Count Orlock who is both pitiful and terrifying, a creature shaped by hunger and loneliness as much as evil. He’s not the romantic vampire of modern cinema (like his brother Alexander's character Eric Northman of "True Blood") and is more the plague and death himself, given human form. It’s not surprising that Skarsgård disappears under the makeup; what’s impressive is that he still conveys so much anguish through it.  Watch his eyes. 

Nicholas Hoult as Hutter (or Harker, for the original Stoker version) plays the role with just the right blend of innocence and mounting dread. Lily-Rose Depp brings a fragile, almost ethereal quality to Ellen (Mina), the film’s tragic center, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson (as Harding/Holmwood) and Emma Corrin (as Anna/Lucy) round out the cast with sharp, grounded performances that make the human drama as compelling as the horror.

And of course, Willem Dafoe as Professor Eberhart (Eggers’ Van Helsing figure) is a treat. It’s impossible not to appreciate the meta-textual layer here, Dafoe once played Max Schreck himself in "Shadow of the Vampire (2000)," a film that imagined the making of the original Nosferatu with Schreck as a real vampire. Seeing him now on the other side of that mirror is a delight for longtime fans of the myth.

Where the 1922 version was stark and alien and the 1979 film was slow and melancholy, Eggers’ Nosferatu is feverish, baroque, and tragic. It’s horror as folklore; personal, physical, and cosmic all at once. The tone is closer to The Witch or The Lighthouse than Dracula; it’s about fear of the unknowable and the price of obsession.

I loved it. It’s the rare modern Gothic that understands how to be beautiful and horrible in equal measure. Eggers never mocks the old tropes; he reveres them. He lets the candlelight flicker, the coffin creak, and the silence linger just long enough to make your skin crawl.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

Do I even need to go over how this would work in-game? Pretty much Ravenloft and Vampire the Masquerade were based on the original movie and the associated Dracula myths/stories.

But taking a page from Egger's books use vampires that are not all "good evening" and charm. Some, most even, should be Death on two legs. 

In this movie Orlock was a Solomonar, or a type of evil sorcerer. This puts him more in line with the Dracula of "Powers of Darkness" and "The Satanic Rites of Dracula." So there is a lot of different things you can do with a vampire like this than you typically see with Dracula. 

In NIGHT SHIFT a vampire with levels of Sorcerer or Witch is truly terrifying creature. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 18
First Time Views: 16