Robert Eggers's Nosferatu remake

As I've muttered elsewhere, a side benefit of seeing the kinda choppy/strange Bikeriders this weekend is that the trailer for Nosferatu ran in front of it, as it's only running that way (officially) for this weekend. Unsurprisingly looked pretty great! So, might as well kick off a thread for it...

This might prove to have wide popular appeal, but I don't see how anyone anyone can improve on Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) and Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

I really loved The Witch and The Lighthouse, they are two of my all-time favorite films, but The Northman was a big disappointment to me, it was too comic-book bombastic.

This sounds like a good fit for him and maybe it will be great, but I'm now suspicious of the direction he's turning in

And here we go with the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b59rxDB_JRg

i'm not hostile to sequels or remakes so the idea of it "improving upon" the other incarnations doesn't really factor in for me at all. this is probably gonna look and atmospherically feel so badass imo, perfect meeting of director and material/mise-en-scène

i loved the northman tho, impossible for me to resist hallucinatory dicks-out viking hamlet

i read a long new york profile of eggers that suggested the northman suffered from a lot of studio interference, not that i could necessarily see it in the final product. but it made me admire eggers' method all the more

yeah I know some here were sour on NOrthman but that shit was my wheelhouse.

looking forward to this and tricking mom into seeing this on Christmas

"It's about a savior who has arrived to release us all from our lives of misery."

"That sounds nice!"

also no one makes vampire movies anymore. i’ve been starving (for blood)

was actually surprised at the number of mainstream Dracula-affiliated films last year, regardless of the quality of them

i guess there was renfield (terrible) and last voyage of the demeter (boring, except for the dope winged and desiccated dracula design)

those were the two I was thinking of.

Abigail was middling vampire fare. Better than Renfield, anyway.

I loved Abigail

I want to see Abigail and Last Voyage of the Demeter, but I'm not sure about this movie given that we already have Nosferatu, Herzog's Nosferatu, and Shadow of the Vampire, all of which rule. Plus, I'm kind of lukewarm on Eggers in general: loved The VVitch, skipped The Lighthouse because I don't like Robert Pattinson, and thought The Northman was...not great. Right now this looks to me like, what if Coppola's Dracula was neither funny nor fun?

Your last point definitely comes to mind; this film feels a little more in conversation with that than the other Nosferatus.

The Murnau film is one of my forever favorites so I’m intrigued. Especially after poring over this trailer shot by shot. Dome cool stuff in there ( Harker surrounded by nuns(?), an ornate stone coffin…)
There’s the classic “Nosferatu in the castle hallway” shot but this time he’s got two wolves (!!) at his side. And another cool, quick shot of the vampire biting someone aboard the ship. Coppola feel is certainly there but I think this may be a fun take.

*Some cool shots

We don't see Orlok's dome clearly enough, unfortunately

Da-dome!

I like a lot about The Northman, especially the cinematography and the complex way that many of the scenes were filmed.

There are some classic vampire films, including Louis Feuillade's classic silent film serial Les Vampires (1915–16), which was remade into the comedy-drama Irma Vep by Olivier Assayas starring Maggie Cheung in 1996, and then into a great miniseries by him starring Alicia Vikander in 2022.

Also, Carl Theodore Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) was an astonishing film

Hate ro be a pedant but there were no vampires in the Feuillade.

i feel like the things that didnt work for me about The Lighthouse (all vibes, no story) could be strengths in a Nosferatu remake, optimistic about this

Hate ro be a pedant but there were no vampires in the Feuillade.

― completely suited to the horny decadence (Capitaine Jay Vee), Tuesday, June 25, 2024 3:05 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Fine degrees of pedantry: Les Vampires are a gang of criminals, but they use vampire imagery to further scare the public.

For my part I wait to see if Eggers includes anything like the night Hutter arrives at Orlok's place (Orlok was totally hitting on him!).

Slightly disappointed that this is still basically Dracula, I always felt Orlok deserved his own stories.

Orlok and the Chamber of Secrets wait hold on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nulvWqYUM8k

lets fucking go :D

Also, Guillermo Del Toro wrapped shooting on his "Frankenstein." And Leigh Whannell has a "Wolf Man" coming out next year. The Dark Universe(tm) is alive!!!!

hell yes to all of that

trailer is pretty ambiguous, but I'm down to give it a shot

I emailed a radio 'year-end movie roundup' program about why The Northman didn't succeed despite its impeccable direction, and the critic opined that the weird/toxic dude energy of the film was maybe not reflecting the cultural moment of its release date

The trailer is giving very straight (non-epistolary) adaptation of the novel vibes. Also a few echoes of Coppola's.

Funny timing in that regard.

Murnau’s Nosferatu movie was also an unofficial adaptation of the novel iirc (so much so that Stoker’s wife sued!)

In related happy news, Alamo's 1979 screening series for September/October means I'll get a chance to see Herzog's version on a big screen in a couple of Saturdays.

The Dark Universe(tm) is alive!!!!

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, October 1, 2024 12:41 AM (seventeen hours ago)

I thought you were joking but I can only see the new Wolfman listed as a part of that. Frankenstein seems to be made for Netflix.

This whole dark universe thing sounds bad and I don't think the crossovers worked that well in the black and white era of Universal. Didn't Del Toro leave previous attempts to do things like this?

This whole dark universe thing sounds bad and I don't think the crossovers worked that well in the black and white era of Universal.

Well, of course it would be much better if we had a modern-day Abbott and Costello to "meet" these new monsters.

Harold & Kumar meet Frankenstein, Key & Peele meet Dracula, Tim & Eric meet Wolfman

Why not cgi Abbott & Costello?

20 years ago a Keenan & Kel Meet Dracula movie would have ruled.

Eric Andre meets the Creature from the Black Lagoon

Eric Andre *as* the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Eric Andre fucks the Creature from the Black Lagoon

…

RANCH IT UP

It's long.

hearing good things about this from people who are easily pleased

hearing good things about this from people who are easily pleased

There's a critic who seems to be personally a good dude, and who has been through some hardships in life which make me want to go easy on him, but he writes like he likes everything he reviews so much that frankly I think he should change his first name from Matt to Mark.

that glengarry glenorlock clip makes me think they could have pivoted halfway through and offered him the part of clay davis

Per this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAQ-y7uftEo

...we're getting an extended cut on Bluray, no surprise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUI6xYTbw0s

Although she showed strength and courage, I think "calling the shots" seems way off, I think she is still a victim, cornered into nothing but bleak options.

Nice to see one of Stableford's first translations referenced
http://www.philsp.com/stableford/translations/angels_of_perversity.htm

I'm still a bit confused about why she and Dafoe were so confident Orlok would arrive so late and forget about morning? Was beating him with weapons really a worse tactic? His magic is too powerful?

Rewatched tonight in an indie cinema packed with film studies students, and it was quite a difference from the boiling, more sparse NYD viewing.

Being not hungover really helped, and on second parse I was able to comprehend a bit more of the meaning behind some of the more oblique stretches of dialogue.

Agree with Robert that there's no obvious clue as to how they keep him out for longer than intended. Stole his watch? Or maybe it's just that he can't resist her and she kept making him come back for more.

The only thing I didn't really understand was how they knew where Orlok kept the soil he laid in. Was it just a good guess?

The book decreed the only winning play so they believed the book
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
xp

Maybe I'm slow but I'm considering that maybe she actually was calling the shots the whole time and genuinely wanted everyone around her dead, including the children.

there is a bit of an ambiguous vibe throughout about whether it's Orlok or she who is pulling the strings, and perhaps even whether Orlok is real or just a manifestation of her inner desires.

The plot of the film could be summarised as "Your high school sweetheart just got out of jail and has started PM-ing you"

Lol

I interpret it as: Orlok’s only purpose was to thirst for Ellen and he’d plague the world until that desire was fulfilled. I didn’t read it as Orlok being tricked, he got what he wanted and he drained Ellen. After their fated union was achieved he got no purpose left.

Or yeah maybe he was so horny that he lost track of time.

lol that's how I read it. like, he was given the choice of surviving or getting lucky, shrugged, and went back to her.

the book of vampires foretold that that was the way to kill him! also early sources on romanian folklore describe nosferatu as both a blood-sucker and an incubus particularly drawn to newlyweds

The only thing I didn't really understand was how they knew where Orlok kept the soil he laid in. Was it just a good guess?

They found it at Nosferatu's new home, Schloss Grünewald, which Hutter had gone to Transylvania to sell him. Not the best job of coffin hiding.

Got it on eBay iirc

One thing I learned from Nosferatu-related reading around all of this is that the idea of vampires being killed by sunlight seems to have been invented for the 1922 film. It's become so embedded in the lore that I always thought it was from the novel.

There seems to be further back precedents for being weakened by sunlight or less powerful

Never seen any version of Nosferatu before, but I thought Defoe really carried the film for me. He got the best lines and just loved his voice and delivery. Couldn't really get into it before he appeared.

I'll try and watch the Murnau at the weekend.

And yeah the cats were great!

His next one is going to be about a Werewolf. He's just collecting all the Halloween outfits at this point

Bizarrely enough the last two films I have watched were this and Twin Peaks (FWWM)...two women's trauma in fantastical settings.

Laura Palmer's family life and sadness were way more centered, guess that's what's missing from this...but I'm guessing the source material is going for something else.

xp I heard that his next project is called "The Knight" and while that sounds cool, it would be even cooler for him to make an original film that isn't called "The (Noun)"

heard he's doing a reboot of The Hangover, sorry

no shade on ppl who liked it but this really wasnt very good

i will read yr thoughts in the morning, maybe someone will have a perspective that changes my mind 😔

I'm not of the right age to have known this, but my daughter pointed out that Ellen & Orlok have the same connection as Lilo & Stitch -- "I'm so lonely, please send me a friend," etc.

She loved it overall, but added this: "Oh, I remembered my primary gripe with this version over all the others: retconning in a backstory reason why ellen/lucy/mina has this mystical connection to orlok/dracula, which explains why he wants to travel to this particular place and seek out this particular woman. In every other version he just wants to move somewhere with a higher population because he’s desiccated the country he lives in, and the real estate broker’s wife just happens to be the first seduceable lady he encounters. I really hate shoehorning in Chosen One narratives and I always liked that Mina & Lucy were average victorian women, so like, dracula wasn’t defeated by a mystical connection, he was mostly just defeated by modernity and education"

your daughter is otm

This one is more than a retcon in that regard, isn't it? Orlok picks the city *because* they are modern and educated and therefore don't believe in vampires, unlike those pesky villagers.

speaking of unwanted/unnecessary remakes:

Robert Eggers is set to write and direct a sequel to the 1986 fantasy Labyrinth.

According to Deadline, the Nosferatu director has just closed a deal to follow up the Jim Henson-directed film for Tristar Pictures. The original starred Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie...

dance the magic dance!

Dance, magic pants

ok i think i will have to rewatch on TV at my leisure to find the film ppl are loving upthread, maybe i shdn't have watched all the other nosferatus plus the universal drac, the hammer drac, coppola's BS drac *and* reread the book as prep for this lol what an idiot. spoilers follow probably

i: it isn't remotely draggy wtf
ii: the music was nothing, a lot of the set design was very AI does gothic
iii: dafoe is fun, counter alfred he steals the pic by hamming it way DOWN tho,elmost everyone else is one-note overwrought
iv: i didnt think much of skarsgard's voice reading or the scene of TH's first meeting with him
v: depp's version of ellen (as basically GOLLUM with -- her desire for the precious sets the plot running, also she destroys the precious, she is constantly flips between two minds, shape of head/mouth -- is i think inspired
vi: "I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards!" <-- eggers evidently takes this line, as did coppola's BS Drac (i think it comes across bad and smug, like "those funny past-times authors and film-makers, swo much going on in this story that they didn't know about, we moderns know!" )
vii: obviously this somewhat up-ends the rival line: "paracelsus? actually correct about everything!" -- but i am probably a bit too stuck on the idea you shouldn't condescend to the past when yr own work is so unaware of its own tensions
viii: i guess what im saying here is "yes there's subtext here but eggers hasn't spotted it, bcz no one except me thinks abt the energies of form any more" (this is why i probably shouldn't have reread the novel for the first time in like 30 years, it sets up a central form vs story conundrum which ppl are still wrestling with) (tho they mostly solve it by just dropping out bits of the stoker original, which is kind of fair enough bcz the original is NOT well formed and has too many main characters for a reason probably better solved by other means in rewrite and edit) (also as dog latin says the novel is very frontloaded in terms of story energy: castle and demeter are grebt, but the battle of london is overlong and clumsily repetitive -- they keep returning to the same places! -- and the climax is rushed and flimsy, which is why every movie remake feels it has to supply a different one) (fun sidenote: stoker's widow who sued to get the murnau versiion cancelled and destroyed was florence balcombe, the girl that bram stole from oscar wilde in the first place, wilde who is sometimes said to be stoker's inspiration for drac)
ix: weird little wriggle about necessary womanly deference to the 1830s aristocracy from this young lord who loses wife and kids, just dropped in late without anticipation, never expanded ion any direction (mrs hutter's justified gollum-not-smeagol riposte here wd be "im doing all the submitting to my lordly betters that i can fit in, fuckbreath!") (again this is an idea eggers has that he immediately forgets, is why im making an anachronistic joke abt it)
x: coppola's Drac BS has about 100 "cinematic ideas" which wd be fun to explore and expand (explores and expands none of them); this has maybe half a dozen (some of them p good tbh) but again forgets them as soon as it's dropped them in
xi: how do they know the plan that works will work, ppl are asking? and this plotline too just leans hard on the earlier versions for the logic of it, herzog's (or better say kinski's) most of all: orlok is p much pure hunger, but for more than one thing -- he has to drink blood to continue of course of course; plus despite being very old he is also massively HORNY… plus he is infinitely lonely. he stays till sunrise bcz it's nice to cuddle afterwards, come on ppl you don't need to read paracelus to know this
xii: tbf kinski delivers all these three just with his wetly rodenty face in that final herzog sequence, the thirst, the horny, the yearning (and popol duh, kinski's best co-performers, colour this in). i love max shreck but he is basicallt the vampire puppet from a punch & judy shoiw (complimentary)
xiii: the knock backplot is well filled out: of course he summoned orlok via satanism! but while i always look forward to simon mcburney he is thrown away here (and the asylum work in these various films are always the weakest stretches, copolla's excellent cage-helmets notwithstanding: read some effing foucault ppl)
xiv: the cat (greta) jumping on the bed at the start evidently surprises hoult and depp into non-actor normal voice improvisation for a line or three = greta steals the picture

formal carelessness on my part here lol, x shd come before ix

Would have been cool if Eggers just reused the Popul Vuh.

As this film has receded in my mind (buried under the 6 or 8 movies I've seen since), it feels fine but inconsequential. A sturdy enough addition to the Dracula canon, but not one of its high points.

watched all the other nosferatus plus the universal drac, the hammer drac, coppola's BS drac *and* reread the book

thank you for your service, mark s

👍🏽

Rewatched at home the other night. My viewings at the cinema were darker and quieter than I had thought, it seems. The sound design is great in this and the Transylvania through castle scenes had a proper sense of dread. Wonderful looking, too. Still, the last appearance of the wolves was the most terrifying thing in this for me. Still not convinced by overly talky Franken-Orlok.

(this is why i probably shouldn't have reread the novel for the first time in like 30 years, it sets up a central form vs story conundrum which ppl are still wrestling with) (tho they mostly solve it by just dropping out bits of the stoker original, which is kind of fair enough bcz the original is NOT well formed and has too many main characters for a reason probably better solved by other means in rewrite and edit) (also as dog latin says the novel is very frontloaded in terms of story energy: castle and demeter are grebt, but the battle of london is overlong and clumsily repetitive -- they keep returning to the same places! -- and the climax is rushed and flimsy, which is why every movie remake feels it has to supply a different one)

all this is otm, the pace of the book starts dragging badly with Lucy's interminable death

the strength of the first third, which is still powerful, is enhanced a lot by Stoker's dossier format, jamming together real-time documents from different narrators and making the reader fill in the gaps ... once the fearless vampire hunters are assembled and Mina has collated their notes in triplicate and they start having meetings of the Anti-Dracula Committee, the story gets buried in paperwork and the suspense disappears

the movies find simpler ways to tell the story, usually as a traditional Gothic period piece .... the Nosferatu versions gain compression by combining a lot of characters but miss out on the weirdness of Stoker's polyandry obsession

this is what i mean by form vs story: stoker needs the “notes in triplicate” dossier format throughout* bcz it's key to his subtext re who mina is: which is that in 1890s terms she’s a super-modern and resourceful capable young lady viz a SECRETARY — up till c.the 1880s secretaries were almost all men — who keeps the team together and informed. she is adept with shorthand! typewriter! phonograph transcription (edison sold the phonograph as office equipment, he disliked that it was diverted towards music, which he had no time for)! and plus keeps track of railway timetables!

she also has dracula on SPEED-DIAL via drac’s telepathy as accessed via van h’s mesmerism: both of which (in the 1890s popular mind) were felt to be adjacent to telegraphy and telephony! (the fashion for ghostly table-tapping kicked off by the fox sisters in the 1840s sprang up directly in the wake of the establishment of the tap-tapping of morse code; as late as the 19teens edison was still muskily promising that very soon we would be able to telephone the DEAD…)

josh upthread calls it a retcon when eggers-drac says he's moving to visburg to escape all the peasant superstition: but is it? it’s not in the original text, true (or any of the other films that i recall), but it’s the affective heart of stoker's subtext, of who mina is, and thus what england is, a world away from the carpathians stitched together by this very capable, highly intelligent, tech-savvy young lady (coppola gestures at the cultural dimension of this a little, but focuses on hats and fashion not the office-worker element); drac is hungry for mina anyway (she’s cute and hot!) but also sees her (via mesmeric telepathy) as the perfect representative of this existing wide-open space of possibility, disconnected from the old ways and hence totally vulnerable as he sees it…

… but NO says stoker, her efficient avant-garde secretarial modernity is the key to his defeat**

*he needs it but then very much fails to solve the problems of pacing it brings with it
**i’m being a little challopsy here but only a little, i think giving mina this indispensable role was distinctly more daring in itself than we can really see it as today, paperwork notwithstanding (all books are paperwork after all)

all true and the book really goes off the rails when Stoker stops letting Mina be Mina (traveling alone to Budapest, of all places, to rescue and marry Jonathan) and instead surrounds her with five ultra-protective males who nonetheless can't figure things out without her help

Stylish, I guess, but I definitely prefer Coppola, The Witch also. I've never seen Herzog, Murnau and Browning long ago.

(Haven't seen Dreyer, either.)

watched this last night & enjoyed it. cards on the table though, i’ve never seem a version of this story that I *didnt* like and i absolutely love Eggers as a filmmaker, i like his finicky precise attention to tiny detail

Lily Rose Depp was excellent - her physical performance was excellent, and even in her normal moments just giving that air of unearthliness, her close-up work is so so good

Dafoe was terrific, his extra-ness was perfect for the tone of the movie & the character

the Orlok voice was a crazy choice. Like it’s SO kooky that it took me out of the movie at times.
But I love Orkok’s decrepitude, that scene where he’s all maggotty on the ship was awesome. And there was a bit of like a Rasputin thing going on with this iteration that i kind of liked
AND omg that final shot of him in the sunlight was so so good, the makeup on that was crazy

i loved the way the movie shifts from scenes that are all greys and blacks into scenes of color

that first scene of Ellen by the shore with ships in the distance & misty washed out whites and greys like a watercolor with the crosses on the dunes as they walked was gorgeous

(had kinda hoped maybe he’d throw in an armadillo somewhere as a browning nod lol but oh well jk)

i’m gonna go read about the production stuff now

despite being a massiver hater i also liked those colour-shifts! i saw a big gala screening of a kevin browlow restoration of murnau's nosferatu years ago with a live orchestra* and everything, and they did that thing which was common in silent movies which ppl afterwards forgot about, which was to project different stretches of the film through coloured filters (like blue for night scenes and yellow for i don't remember and pink ditto ditto) and the eggers version is also doing this, which is pleasing

*for a carl davis score conducted live by carl davis is what i remember it as tho the internet is not helping me out here -- was it maybe the 1998 james bernard score instead? (bernard wrote the music for several hammer horrors)

oh and i liked the casting of Dafoe also as a nice little wraparound nod to Shadow of a Vampire (another one that i loved!)

Shadow of *the Vampire

one other thought

i think given how Nosferatu/Dracula is such an archetype now, in that fairytale way… I think it’s ok that Eggers made a really beautiful version of this story, AND i think it’s okay that not much new was done to it.

If anyone is allowed that leeway, for me, it’s him.

I don’t know if this movie would entice people new to this story, but for me it was just a good reaffirmation that as-is it is still a great story that I have not grown tired of in the retelling

Like a retelling of a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, or Beowulf, or King Arthur — like if you can just get the story beats down and nail the details, the story asserts itself through those details and reminds you why it has been told so many times

For me it’s reassuring in a way. Like yeah, Nosferatu still whips. Tell me that story again. I’ll watch the hell out of it.

Otm

Dafoe with his startling facial expressions and his long pipe is as genuinely hilarious as has been reported, he cracked me up a few times. Fantastic actor. Really loved this movie.

Dafoe felt a bit like he'd been teleported in from the set of Dracula: Dead and Loving It, but why not.

He's become what Christopher Walken once was: you can't get a Willem Dafoe type, you have to hire Willem Dafoe.

the Orlok voice was a crazy choice. Like it’s SO kooky that it took me out of the movie at times.

I could understand it as a choice you might make when workshopping the character. He's dead, so breath doesn't move naturally through his body, which means speech doesn't come naturally to him, so he has to make the conscious effort to push his lungs in and out and make a voice happen, which all takes a lot of bagpipe-type effort and wheezing and phlegmy sounds and whatever, but I do feel like when he started actually delivering dialogue in this manner, someone should've said "this is a bit annoying and is slowing everything down tremendously, it was a nice idea but we need to ditch it."

I did not love this film. I think maybe I do not love Robert Eggers so much except for The Witch and maybe parts of The Lighthouse.