This one was infamous before it was even out. The movie’s reputation preceded it and as a lover of vampires, clearly I had to make this one a field day.
Nosferatu (2024)
Newlywed Thomas is called to Transylvania to assist reclusive Count Orlok with a real estate deal. Against the warnings of his wife Ellen whose nightmares make her cautious, he goes. The horror he experiences there will end up following him home.
Spoilers
Nosferatu (2024) is a fantastic movie. Everyone acts their heart out and the lighting and cinematography are really something else. I found the sequences in Transylvania especially chilling. It’s all just so well made.
A young Ellen feels lonely and abandoned and calls out into the night for someone, anyone, and someone answers. Later she is in a relationship society expects from her but there is something standing between her and her husband, between them and marital happiness. That something is at once a repressive society as well as Ellen’s traumatic adolescent experiences. The relationship between Ellen and Count Orlok is sexually liberating in the same way it is obsessively predatory. The movie asks us to hold both of these ideas in our head even if it makes us uncomfortable, especially if it makes us uncomfortable.
Gothic fiction has us sit with discomfort and instinctive disgust and rejects a black and white interpretation. And judging by pearl-clutching reviews the movie succeeded in that beautifully.
I feel like I have to justify putting it at 3, because in many technical aspects it is better than the movie I put at 2. It’s just Nosferatu is a story I’m familiar with and while this movie was certainly worth making in my opinion, because it brought with it new perspectives, it didn’t surprise me so much; possibly also because I’d already heard many good things about it before I watched it. I was told it was excellent and it is. Expectations met.
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