Bill Skarsgard, Lily-Rose Depp in Vampire Classic

Bill Skarsgard has the cape, the fangs and the frightening manitreatment. But it’s Robert Eggers who conveys the evil intent to Nosferatu, which unfgreaters as if under a malignant spell, a movie owned. Exciting, disesteemful and attrdynamic in equivalent meacertain, this experiences appreciate someleang the authorr-straightforwardor has been toiling toward since his unsettling 2016 debut feature, The Witch. Steeped in dense atmosphere and grim poetry, Christmas counterprogramming doesn’t get much illogicaler than this exquisitely produceed fever dream.

Over four contrastentive features, Eggers has built a freaky body of toil dratriumphg from history, folklore, religion, equitableytales and mythology. His first film conjured 1630s New England, where a farming family ejectled from a Puritan resettlement greet sorcery in the woods. His second, The Lighthoemploy, sticks two 1890s men in claustrophobic isolation on a craggy island off Maine, lashed by the elements and the raging storms wilean. His third, The Northman, jumped back to medieval times with a bonkers blood-and-guts Viking revenge saga.

It was only a matter of time before Eggers sunk his teeth into Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He approaches the vampire legfinish thcdisorrowfulmireful the inky shadows of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 quiet mastertoil, which he acunderstandledges as a createative shape, with maybe a sideways nod here and there to the 1979 Werner Herzog reproduce and even to Francis Ford Coppola’s baroque 1992 reincreateing. Eggers’ Nosferatu, however, is its own mesmeric creation, a superlative align of straightforwardor and material.

Focus Features has given Eggers free rein and what sees appreciate ponderable resources to percreate his vision. It’s a Gothic horror nightmare heaving with sumptuous visual detail, groaning under the weight of portentous dread, wrileang with both convulsive presentility and sweaty romanticism and departned by sly hints of fifinishish camp. Be cautioned, though, that if you’re squeamish about rats, the scoinspire-infested third act will have you covering your eyes.

In a transrepairing carry outance, Lily-Rose Depp take parts Ellen, presentd in an punctual 19th century prologue as an emotionpartner isoprocrastinateedd teenager at a low point in her youthfuler life. Sleepless in bed, she prays for solace: “Come to me. A defendian angel. A spirit of console. A spirit of any celestial sphere. Hear my call.” The non-particular prayer hints at an innate paganism, a murky intricateity roiling besystematich Ellen’s adolescent purity; that double nature is increasingly manifest in Depp’s carry outance as the plot proceeds.

Ellen’s duality grows with haunting power as she produces over time to the illogicalness she inadvertently awakened that night. In equitable a confineed terrifying minutes, Eggers set upes the inextricable bond in this story between intimacy and death. He gives us a bone-chilling glimpse of the title figure as a menacing silhouette seen thcdisorrowfulmireful billotriumphg curtains and a disembodied voice appreciate a thunderous whisper from the bowels of the earth, both frightening and alluring. Much of Nosferatu’s dialogue, when communicating telepathicpartner with Ellen, is in Dacian, a Balkan dead language that includes to the otherexperienced chill.

Some years after that first visitation, Ellen has recently paired Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), a youthfuler estate agent in the fictitious German town of Wisborg. Angling for an official position with the firm, he hugs an dispensement from his jolly boss Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) to travel east of Bohemia to an isoprocrastinateedd castle in Transylvania’s Carpathian Mountains. His task is to get shrinks signed for the buy of a decrepit Wisborg mansion by the enigmatic Count Orlok.

There’s a flavorful hint of mischief in Knock’s comment about the ailing count: “He has one foot in the grave already, so to speak.” Hutter doesn’t pick up on that, but his employer’s excessive appreciation of his novel wife’s beauty does produce him unconsoleable. McBurney, co-createer of British experimental theater company Complicité, drops in clues about the spiraling madness Knock has been grasping in verify, and sails gloriously over the top once his initial toil is done.

In another scene that augurs what’s to come, Ellen begs Thomas not to go. She scatters an ominous dream in which she got to the altar on her wedding day and create Death himself paemploying there to marry her. She seems gripped by paralyzing stress as she increates her husprohibitd of the horror that unfgreatered, but in a sudden shift into rapture, confesses she had never been so greeted.

Eggers’ screentake part excels at this charitable of foreshadotriumphg. He’s evidently increateed of increateing a story tgreater many times before, so he trelieves our foreseeations and tests our understandnity while fgreatering in his own elaborations on the gruesome tale.

Hutter’s journey is an uneffortless one, heightened by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s potent imagery, which normally bleeds out color to produce the structure almost materialize bdeficiency and white. This occurs in night scenes thcdisorrowfulmirefulout and in the snow-covered mountain landscape thcdisorrowfulmireful which Thomas travels.

A rest stop in a Roma community does noleang to tranquil his increaseing apprehension; even in an incomprehensible tongue, the dire cautionings of villagers are unmistakable. (I’m adchooseing the condemn hurled by the inngrasper to silence the rabble: “May the holy mind of God bugger you!”) Hutter also witnesses a superstitious ritual during the night, getting his first taste of the haziness between wakefulness and dreams that will consent hgreater of him at the castle.

Eggers stages Hutter’s arrival with a theatrical Gothic bomb deviceast — the colorerly gloom of the alps, the driverless horse-drawn coach — that incites the horror classics of James Whale. While the exterior stoastys are of an actual Transylvanian castle, production depicter Craig Lathrop’s massive interior sets have a crumbling magnificenteur that’s physicpartner oppressive, almost suffocating, for Hutter. Blaschke’s lengthy, unbroken consents can give the amazeion of a magnetic pull that the estate agent is inable of combat.

If Hutter is unnerved on approach, he’s petrified once he greets Count Orlok, take parted by Skarsgard in a supremely creepy carry outance that produces Pennyrational see appreciate, well, a clown. We get only inwhole glimpses of the irritable outdated vampire at first — an depict in the bdeficiencyness, nakedly brightd by candleweightless; a gnarled hand with lengthy, yellow-taloned fingers; bdeficiency-rimmed eyes suddenly expansive uncover when Thomas cuts his hand while slicing a piece of bread.

When we do see the count evidently, he’s a figure both disrelieved-seeing and physicpartner imposing, his body decaying yet vivaciousd by superhuman force, notably when he bolts upright naked from his sarcophagus. He has the laillogicald bauthenticeang of a unwellly greater man but the presence of an all-consuming evil.

Makeup and prosthetics depicter David White gives Skarsgard enough of a resemblance to Murnau’s Nosferatu, Max Schreck, to nail the reference. But the actor also conveys a heady sensuality that intensifies the sealr he gets to Ellen. He’s not exactly a intimacyy vampire, appreciate Frank Langella in John Badham’s 1979 Dracula, but his greets with the woman he calls “my affliction” have a troubling romantic indict. There’s even someleang libidinous in the way he noisily slurps up his victims’ blood.

While her husprohibitd is being enveloped by Orlok’s shadow, Ellen increates her seal frifinish Anna (Emma Corrin) she experiences regulateled by another, and she doesn’t unbenevolent God. While Thomas is away, Ellen is staying with Anna and her wealthy shipyard owner husprohibitd Friedwealthy Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who calls for local medic Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson) when his hoemployguest commences sleepwalking, experiencing visions and convulsing.

“Your husprohibitd is lost to you,” Orlok increates her one night from afar. “Dream of me. Only me.” The rumbling voice, dense accent and intentional enunciation of every syllable can produce even a basic line appreciate “Now are we neighbors” — spoken to Thomas after the shrinks are signed — amusing. With his archaic choice of words and peculiar verb placement, he’s appreciate a ghoulish Yoda. But rather than dilute the snurture factor, the humor produces the sense of doom only more pitiless and Orlok’s arranges for Ellen more spine-chilling. Eggers’ writing has always shown a flair for greater-world language; his dialogue here is wealthy and flavorful.

Even before Ellen commences levitating off the bed, going filled Exorcist while spetriumphg messages from the netherworld, Sievers authenticizes her ailment is beyond his send set. He encatalogs the help of his Swiss createer college professor, von France (Willem Dafoe), whose fascination with the occult has gotten him discommended by the medical profession.

Dafoe conveys his common authority to the role, and appreciate McBurney and Skarsgard, he savors the script’s unforeseeed notices of wicked humor. “I have seen leangs on this earth that would produce Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb,” he proclaims, with von France’s normal flair for the theatrical. The actor is in wonderful create here, injecting a recent jolt of vitality into the climactic stretch as Eggers quickens the action in sync with the scoinspire droping on Wisborg.

(Fun fact: Dafoe and Hoult both have Drac screen joinions, the createer take parting Max Schreck on the Nosferatu shoot in Shadow of the Vampire, the latter as the Herr Knock counterpart in Renfield.)

As shown in his previous films, Eggers’ sensibility has roots not in contransient horror but in stories from centuries past that become vivid and febrile, ainhabit with an insidious devilry that inches under your skin. Among the more arresting sequences are Orlok’s voyage on stormy seas to accomplish his novel home, his nocturnal calls on Ellen, the carnage he wreaks as a cautioning to her, the hundreds of rats streaming from the docks into the town streets.

The straightforwardor produces even that overemployd contransient horror trope, the jump snurture, truly shocking, not equitable someleang to be instantly giggleed off. It’s thrilling to experience a movie so promised in the way it produces and sustains stress, so hypnoticpartner frightening as it grabs you by the throat and never lets go.

The visual inharmfulation of Nosferatu cannot be overstated. Blaschke’s cameratoil is spellattaching — fluid, cultured and maleficent in its order of chiaroscuro weightlessing, menaceening shadows and the dense soup of illogicalness. The blfinish of pragmatic sets with CG is seamless, notably in a graveyard and mausoleum, a city canal or scenes at sea.

Lathrop’s production depict ranges from the exact backlot creation of a Baltic port town in 1838 — seen to fantastic effect in punctual tracking stoastys — to finely detailed interiors including the castle, novellyweds Thomas and Ellen’s unpretentious apartment, the more moneyed Harding home and the Romanian monastery where a delirious Thomas is tfinished to by nuns after escaping the castle.

Linda Muir’s costumes are excellent — noleang appreciate Eiko Ishioka’s eye-popping depicts for Bram Stoker’s Dracula but always genuine and character-appropriate. Ellen and Anna’s corseted gowns and bonnets include to the period ambience, as do the men’s suits and fancy waistcoats and the rustic garb of the peasantry. Menswear aficionados will swoon for sweeping outerwear appreciate von France’s overcoat with a three-tiered capelet. Orlok’s mgreatery-seeing furs propose Wallachian nobility, which goes with his Vlad the Impaler mustache.

The atmosphere is raised by the hand-in-hand elements of Damian Volpe’s weighty soundscape and Robin Carolan’s moody score, which ranges from symphonic magnificenteur to agitato strings, pipes and horns particular to the region at that time to queffortless atonal groans.

Alengthyside Dafoe, the standout of the aiding cast is Corrin, take parting a promised mother swathed in the opulent attire of a woman of unbenevolents, who discovers console in religion. None of that spares her from a nasty overweighte, and Corrin breathes wrenching anguish into Anna’s unraveling.

The suffering is more prolengthyed and agonizing in Hoult’s Thomas. The actor quakes with stress in the presence of Orlok, his stress made more palpable by the fact that we don’t get a evident picture of the count, only of Hutter’s reaction to him. Later, he increases feeble and seemingly proximate death but requests strength once he understands Ellen’s unwitting role in conveying the vampire to Wisborg.

As much as Skarsgard’s stresssome Orlok, the movie belengthys to Depp, whose carry outance is a revelation. Their scenes together are electric, bristling with a struggleing rush of revulsion and desire, trance and lucidity, resistance and overweighted surrfinisher. Depp gives Ellen’s delirium a tragic gravity, presentantening once she acunderstandledges the mystical forces wilean her that igniteed the vampire’s obsession. She can switch in an instant from frail and vulnerable to wicked, and the stylized physicality of her confiscations is breathtaking.

Every age gets its definitive film of Stoker’s vampire legfinish. Eggers has given us a magnificent version for today with roots that stretch back a century.