NOSFERATU from Robert Eggers - Christmas

[AndyDursin]

OK, I'll (probably) go...

[Paul MacLean]

Yay! Another old idea!

[AndyDursin]

Hey it was old when Herzog remade it too!

I'm interested in seeing what he does with it. Or if it's just THE WITCH with a vampire (my guess!).

[Monterey Jack]

The Northman was my second-favorite movie of 2022. Whatever Eggers is doing, I'm interested.

[Paul MacLean]

The Northman was my second-favorite movie of 2022. Whatever Eggers is doing, I'm interested.

You only saw two movies that year?

[AndyDursin]

6.5/10

Despite his patented "static" camera work, Eggers' movie is beautifully realized from a visual perspective and pretty much as expected story wise, but what's the deal with some people doing cartwheels over it? From a dramatic angle this movie grows increasingly tedious after a good start, with Lily Rose Depp generating nothing from a performance perspective. She screams and whines about the big scary guy with the moustache but I never felt for her or her plight (honestly I felt more from a miscast Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker's Dracula). More over, unintentional comedy eventually shows up once Nicholas Hoult comes home and tries to get her from fantasizing about Nosferatu himself, a moustached villain who looks more like something out of Dudley Do-Right and talks...really...slowly...which makes the material a hard sell, since Bill Skarsgard's performance is sillier than it is sensual.

The shock sequences are mostly all sound and fury with the music pumped up -- it's not aggressively bad like Eggers' deadly LIGHTHOUSE but I didn't think this was even as effective as the Coppola take on this material, which at least had more filmmaking invention despite a mixed assortment of uneven performances.

[Paul MacLean]

Finally sat down and watched it myself.

6.5 from me as well.

I'll give it points for its arresting imagery, impressive sets and exquisite lighting -- it's gorgeously shot, no question.

On the other hand, the street sets look like sets -- you can tell the brickwork is sculpted and not real. Werner Herzog had far-less money when making his Nosferatu but everything looked real (because he used real locations). Agreed on the "Dudley Do-Right" vampire (with his handlebar mustache!), who, while very disgusting, wasn't the least bit scary. He was nowhere near as creepy as Max Schreck, or even Klaus Kinski.

In fact this movie went overboard with disgusting images (like the old guy biting the head off the pigeon), but was never once frightening.

It's also very slow-moving -- it probably could have lost a good half-hour. I did like Willem Dafoe as the kooky "Van Helsing" character, but Nicholas Hoult's overacting in the castle scenes was unintentionally funny (I blame Eggars' poor direction for this).

Finally, the burning question hanging over this movie is why make Nosferatu at all? The original film was a knock-of of Bram Stoker's book, which changed the names and setting to try and avoid copyright infringement. Well, Stoker's book is now in the public domain, so why not just adapt Dracula itself?

But hey, at least Eggars helps us "reclaim the human spirit"...

[AndyDursin]