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sregan · 4 months ago

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Nos feratu, ton feratu - Eggers' vampyr, 'woke horror', and the shadow of the Deathbird

Spoilers ahead for Nosferatu, Dracula, The Burial, The Vampyre, The Oldest View, The Rolling Giant.

"To the bed the left unsaid Crawl in from outside my window Hands red and cold as the dead A pity they're not pretty like they used to be" - The Birthday Massacre, 'Pins And needles'

The folkloric Nosferatu is a Romanian monster whose name means, roughly, 'Insufferable' (from Latin 'ne+suferit), though a minority view is that it comes instead from the Greek 'nosophoros' - 'disease-bearing'. This turns out to be important.

'Nosferatu (2024)' is the latest entry in the filmography of director Robert Eggers ('The VVitch: A New England Folktale', 'The Lighthouse', 'The Norseman'. A remake of the 1922 F.W. Murnau film 'Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror', Eggers' effort also stirs in elements from the 1979 Herzog remake 'Nosferatu the Vampyre'. This has the effect of bringing the plot closer to Bram Stoker's 'Dracula', of which the 1922 version was an unauthorised adaptation, and which was almost lost to history after a lawsuit from Stoker's widow compelled Murnau to destroy all reels.

We should note here a telling point: 'Nosferatu (1922)' is said to 'star' Max Schreck as the titular vampire. 'Nosferatu (1979)' 'stars' Klaus Kinski. A similar consensus is likely to emerge on the 2024 version 'starring' Bill Skarsgård (though a few reviewers prefer to place Nicholas Hoult, the real estate agent menaced by Skarsgård, in top billing). This is in-line with the many, many adaptations of 'Dracula'. We speak of 'the Lugosi version', 'the Christopher Lee version', 'the Gary Oldman version'. Orlok and Dracula are understood to be the stars of their respective films in a way I'm not sure is universally true of horror (thought as I say this, Robert Englund and Tony Todd come to mind).

As one might expect from an adaptation of an adaptation of Dracula, the plot follows broadly the same beats - Hoult's Thomas Hutter travels to Transylvania to meet a wealthy European nobleman who wishes to buy land in his own city (Wisburg rather than London, in-line with Murnau's localisation). He finds himself menaced and held prisoner by his increasingly supernatural-seeming host and eventually escapes, even as the vampiric noble makes his own way to his city. There he finds his friends and family attacked one by the monster, eventually uniting with other like-minded individuals to launch an attack on the monster's new home.

The devil, however, is in the details, and 'Nosferatu (2024)' ends up quite a different beast to either 'Dracula' or even its predecessor. Murnau infamously contributed a major part of the modern vampire mythos by his hurried denouement in 1922; rather than being caught up with while fleeing back to his native land and killed by simultaneous throat-cutting and heart-piercing with knives (as per Dracula the book) or staked in the coffin in his new headquarters (frequently in Dracula adaptations), Orlok, the titular Nosferatu, is killed by the sun; instead of a final showdown between Hutter and Orlok, his wife Ellen feigns weakness and sends away her protector to lure him in, knowing he will not be able to resist feeding on her blood a little too long as morning approaches.

The title card explaining this is one I have always found immensely evocative: "...and the truth bore witness to the miracle: at that very moment the Great Death came to an end, and the shadow of the deathbird was gone... as if obliterated by the triumphant rays of the living sun". It's a quote I've sought to use in my long-standing project Zorian Saga.

The beginning of the 1922 film makes a somewhat odd explanation of why Orlok, a being identified throughout the film with the plague rat, should be called a 'deathbird': 'Nosferatu! Does this name not sound like the deathbird calling your name at midnight? Beware you never say it, for then the pictures of life will fade to shadows, haunting dreams will climb forth from your heart and feed on your blood.' Let's go with this for now, but Murnau clearly had something else in mind by this card which we'll discuss later.

Eggers' Nosferatu goes with this ending for its titular vampire, and I reflected while watching it that, as an original production today claiming to be a loose adaptation of Dracula, it would most likely be considered - excuse the croak like the deathbird in the trees - 'woke'. The female lead wins the day, and this is even telegraphed immediately after the male hero swears he will accomplish vengeance - a male-protector victory - even if it means his death. And at this he fails; despite rushing home when he realises where Orlok must be, his young wife dies in the process of saving him and her city. He survives; she dies. Put a pin in that. I even think Eggers has Dafoe's von Franz (a version of Professor Bulwer, himself a take-off of the novel's Van Helsing utter the words 'She's the key'. Cue the usual suspects; except that doesn't quite seem to have happened; the deathbird seems to have flown under the radar.

Was, then, Murnau's 1922 production a 'woke' Dracula, 'updated for our times' (the Roaring Twenties)? Arguably 1922 gives its female deuteragonist even more agency as she discovers the book (in this version taken by Hutter from the Transylvanian village) and decides on her own to use herself as bait. In 2024, von Franz urgently discusses the matter with Lily-Rose Depp's Ellen - falling short of outright ordering her to sacrifice herself, but pleading with her that Orlok may be proof against their stakes and that the men are bound on a wild goose chase.

A striking change - in 1922, Orlok fades cleanly if implausibly away in a very early SFX shot, leaving nothing more than singed carpet. In 2024, he remains as a horrible shrivelled mass in the room - an unacknowledged lump just in frame throughout the denouement. We get the sense less that the sun burned him to ashes and more that it has dessicated him or reduced him to what he would have been without his un-life; a bag of bones. In the final scene where Hutter says goodbye to his wife, Orlok's remains are still lying on top of her. The score and framing doesn't try to tease that he may shockingly revive - the tension is gone - so I can only read this decision by Eggers as saying something about the Pyrrhic nature of the victory and the permanent marring nature of evil.

1922's Ellen is redeemed by her action, her body whole and seemingly unmarked. 2024's Ellen seems almost damned, half-nude and covered by the monster that is presented as not merely feeding on her blood but preying on her sexually. This, frankly, doesn't seem like a 'woke' decision by Eggers. One could easily read it as something very unpalatable indeed (more on that later).

In fact, with the possible exception of the doctor's assistant who appears in one scene, I believe all women onscreen die, even the children. Is this 'woke'? Nor is Emma Corrin's Anna Harding (who occupies the place of the novel's Lucy Westenra) converted into a vampire. We only find Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Friedrich Harding curled up lifelessly with her corpse after breaking into her crypt and it's mentioned he died of plague, which sores we previously saw on him.

And instead of the 'triumphant rays of the living sun' quote and an image of the castle of horrors crumbled to ruin, 2024 ends with Dafoe merely repeating the quote from the book: "And so the maiden fair did offer up her love unto the beast, and with him lay, in close embrace until the first cock crow. Her willing sacrifice thus broke the curse, and freed them from the plague of Nosferatu." It's not an uplifting ending by any means.

Redditors believe the framing of the shot of Ellen and Orlok united in death is deliberately evoking the 'Maiden and Death' motif from renaissance German art, which is foreshadowed when she relates dreams about marrying Death. Since the book comes from Knock's office and is an occult text, they theorise that Orlok always intended Ellen to offer herself to him as a 'trap', and to end his own immortal life in her arms. In this view, Orlok does win - he takes Hutter's wife from him, legally (more on that later) and then sexually, perhaps damning her soul to be with him forever.

Religion is an odd topic in 'Nosferatu'. In Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' and many of its adaptations, the holy is centrally important; prayers, crosses and consecrated wafers are all in the arsenal the vampire-hunters employ; consecrating his grave soil so he can no longer rest in it, and warding him away with symbols of Christianity, which appear to physically hurt him. In Eggers 'Nosferatu', invocations of God are not effective - he makes a painful point of having the children recite the Lord's Prayer before they are slain by Orlok. Von Franz's incantations over Ellen's seizing body contain demon names from the Goetia rather than Christian prayer (I heard Asmodai), but it's not entirely clear these are doing anything either. Orlok breezes past crosses and wafers are never used (though these are by far the least employed in adaptation), though fire is used to purge his rat-infested hideout.

From this we might conclude that Orlok is something other than a creature of Abrahamic folklore, despite the various portentous descriptions we are given of him - worse than the Devil, Death itself. By not having the characters raise the issue I felt Eggers almost wants it both ways - Victorian sensibilities when we are to believe the protagonists have never heard of a vampire; but also to tell a different and more modern kind of story that disregards the framework in which they would conceptualise such events (I also felt this crept in with regard to Ellen's corset, where Eggers is making a point about women's agency but from a decidedly modern perspective).

Arguably, however, the 1922 'Nosferatu', which makes the ‘Living Sun’ the final vanquisher of evil, already did this. Moreover, the argument has been made that 'Dracula' itself was the first 'techno-thriller', medicalising the supernatural with modern professionals (doctors and lawyers) in the lead role rather than priests. Blood transfusions are tried to save Lucy Westenra; Dracula's influence is presented as a disease; cutting-edge technology like telephones and train timetables are used to locate the source; and ultimately it's two blades (including an exotic kukri knife) rather than the intervention of God that destroys the Count.

This causes me to reflect on whether Dracula as it might be envisaged as a truly faithful adaptation - liberated from its framework as an epistolary novel - is even 'horror' or (God help us) 'action-adventure'.

Nosferatu was not for me a 'scary' film - there were no moments when I felt disorientated or uncanny, as though my location in the theatre was itself at risk, despite attempts by Eggers to do this with unsettling close-ups and - sigh - jumpscare flashes of Orlok’s features or (Ellen?)’s face contorted or vomitjng blood. It did, however, leave me questioning the values it was attempting to convey, which may be a deliberate effort to create discussion.

Perhaps the most unsettling moment for me was an ad before the movie - the flashing words appearing in order 'There Is Still Time' - perhaps evocative of the phrase in 2024's 'I Saw The TV Glow' - briefly brought on mild disassociation. Sadly the concluding part of the phase was 'to get snacks from the foyer'.

Hutter's experience in the vampire's castle was well-framed to create unease; Orlok is never in focus or at the center of the frame while Hutter is presented as in some kind of a terror-trance - the 'waking nightmare' described by the villagers. We don’t grasp what makes him afraid but feel that he loses time.

Skarsgård's Orlok is not 'creepy' in the same way as Max Schreck's seminal performance - riding closer to the rim of 'undead nobleman' in faded finery rather than 'slimy creature'. The mustache and hank of limp forelook is accurate to book Dracula - indeed, perhaps the most visually accurate Dracula ever put to screen - which is an odd choice given Orlok has always been hairless, pointed-eared and rat-toothed. It also seemed to deliberately evoke a certain other mustachioed and combed-over figure in history, which we'll get to later.

Part of this is Schreck's silence (of course not diagetic but a limitation of the medium). I found Skarsgård's booming voice vaguely comical. Dspite it being commonplace in Dracula and Nosferatu adaptations (after Lugosi for whom the accent was real!), the idea that the vampire has a thick Hungarian accent goes against Dracula the book, where the Count is specifically said to have cultivated an 'accentless' (read: upper-class British) English accent. Christopher Lee is perhaps the most authentic voice of Dracula, despite having relatively few lines.

'Nosferatu (2022)' is a very dark film - literally. There's a stylistic choice to evoke black and white but in the cinema it felt flat and muddy in some shots. The original 'Nosferatu' is not dark - rather, it is starkly lit with deep contrasts and day-for-night shots.

Orlok's breathing is a character in itself; the idea being that he is undead and must laboriously draw breath to make sound; advertises his presence either literally or when background noise or another character's breath suggests it. Some people evidently disliked this and thought it made him sound like Darth Vader.

Skarsgård's makeup is impressive; ghoulish without being too obviously decayed which would weaken him too much. His face is mostly intact (thought his nose has a bump I think intended to suggest slippage) but the back of his head has areas of exposed bone and maggots, as though the areas that were touching the soil have decayed more during his sleep.

His use of Romanian as a Sauron-esque Black Speech was slightly uncomfortable, and something I haven't seen discussed by reviewers ("Was this 'woke'?" asks Marc Anthony). I feel the whole whispering-at-a-distance thing has also become cliché.

His motivation is - unless we buy the theory above where he supposedly planned the events of the final act - a little murky. He claims to want to consume the whole world but seems only really to want Ellen, and indeed, it was her psychic (?) call that awoke him from slumber ('It's the Girl Who Is The Key To Everything' again, a chuddish YouTuber might mutter). We might feel here the lower stakes of past 'Dracula' and 'Nosferatu' stories rubbing up here against the escalating stakes of modern horror. The vampire must not be merely a threat to the protagonist and his loved ones but a snowballing disaster that must be stopped.

In all versions of 'Nosferatu', Orlok is associated with a spreading plague, something unique to this 'line' of development and not present in the novel. With 2022's Orlok there's no risk of conversion into a vampire; victims die of physical injuries or plague. It's suggested at one point that all victims suffer plague except Hutter who was spared by the gypsies' prayers (the only effective religion in the film). Did Knock say he hoped to be turned into a vampire ("I should have been the prince of rats"?). It doesn't seem like he was as he is impaled easily when von Franz says he fears Orlok is proof against stakes.

I don't think Orlok visibly de-ages as he feed which is also a deliberate choice; in the book Stoker says his hair becomes darker as he feeds, showing he is growing in power, but says he remains repugnant looking no matter how young he becomes. Coppola's 'Bram's Stoker's Dracula' most clearly has Oldman (!) de-age after getting some new blood and a new lease on unlife. This Orlok remains a putrid animated corpse throughout and it's a bit unclear what he does with the blood; does it fuel his shadow powers? Does he even need to feed or is it more of a flex on the living?

2024 Orlok has a raft of powers - his mind control in particular seems much greater than, e.g. Legosi's Dracula; there's no contest of wills, rather when you get near him you’re in a dreamlike state. He can’t teleport - we see this when Thomas escapes the crypt, locking him inside, but can project his shadow (which may be a visual representation of telekinesis) to open doors and command others. This power may be what he uses to communciate remotely with Ellen (as shown by his silhouette appearing in curtains when he's not physically there). He can also possess people at a distance - possibly? I think that when Ellen comes onto Thomas it's actually Orlok in control; I was a little bit unsure about this as she's the only person he does it with. It also doesn't seem like he can shapeshift; he has three wolves (who appear to combine the wolves in the forest and the three wives of Dracula) but they are clearly 'familiars' distinct from him.

He doesn't have multiple coffins, a smart move by book Dracula; it's hinted that Orlok would have been invulnerable to stakes - but didn’t destroying the coffin beat him if he has no way to rest? Von Franz is deliberately vague on whether destroying his grave soil will beat him. He can't teleport (we see this in the crypt scene) so he can't get back to Transylvania unless just 'transported in a chest' works. The tension created in the final scene with Ellen's sacrifice suggests no - Hutter and co didn't stop him by destroying his coffin; Orlok doesn't need to sleep in grave dirt.

Which begs the question - is 2022 Orlok even really a vampire? He doesn't seem to *need* blood (although his death where the sun seemingly forces him to regurgitate the blood he has swallowed might hint that he does), he has no vampiric weaknesses other than the sun, and he is called "the undead plague corpse". This, however, is not a nosferatu but something else - a neuntoter! The neuntoter was specifically a plague vampire and could kill without even leaving his coffin, spreading an exponentially growing plague that made him a threat to eveyone in the community.

Traditionally the Nosferatu was very much an original folkloric vampyre, which surprisingly did not necessarily have fangs but used a dagger to pierce its victim's skin and suck blood from the wound. It's possible Murnau and Eggers are both basing their interpretation on the contested 'nosophoros' etymology.

The deathbird, meanwhile, nods back to a much, much older blood-sucking monster, the Greco-Roman strix or striges, which give their name to the later and more recognisable strigoi. The strixes were harpy-like monsters with human faces who would sup blood from sleeping victims, and whose name simply means an owl; the bird known in folklore as the death bird and whose humanlike shriek foretells death. Indeed, some early vampyres do not bite their victim but call out their name to kill them, banshee-like, which is clearly a residue of beliefs about the striges and owl superstitions.

Book Dracula, is more associated with wolves than bats, something forgotten in subsequent adaptations. In fact, at least one Romanian term for vampire, the Varacolaci, means 'wolf's fur' and is also the term for werewolf. Book Dracula is said to have hairy palms and a unibrow - not even Eggers leans quite this far into hirsuitism. We've discussed how 1922 and 1979 Nosferatu instead make Orlok associated with rats. 2022 has the wolves as mentioned and makes the rats almost more of a byproduct of Orlok than his namesake; I believe this is the only adaptation where his coffin-sleep is naked and surrounded by plague-rats.

What then makes the 'vampire' in modern horror? Many have read into Stoker the idea that Dracula represents threatening changing sexual mores and specifically the creeping threat of syphilis, which Stoker himself may have had. The promiscuous 'bad woman' Lucy dies, the virtuous maiden Mina survives (a horror formula that would last well into the 1990s and the rampages of Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees). For Eggers Orlok is something different - perhaps a groomer, certainly a powerful man who abuses his position to get what he wants (the reading of vampire as capitalist sucking his workers dry is also now long established). But it's interesting to see that in Egger's conception the taint of the vampire still renders women unfit for life - and this time there are no survivors.

Horror has long located the ‘other’ in the marginalised, weak or deformed, and even the feminine or effeminate; it reflects what people feared. Some of this is very understandable - people are afraid of sickness and deformity on a base, instinctual level, so the walking dead combine fears of death and disease. It's striking then that many modern adaptations lean away from this, presenting the vampire as desirable, even enviable.

Surprisingly however, this tendency has solid roots in the genre - the very first modern vampire novella, 'The Vampyre' by John William Polidori, presents Count Ruthven (whose name, unnoticed by critics, appears to be a pun on rot+vene, 'Red Vein' in German) as an attractive lothario whose ruinous attentions cause scandal in early 19th century England. It's also, noteably, like 'Nosferatu', a take-off of an earlier work, 'The Burial', a fragment of a story by none other than Lord Byron. 'The Burial' sees a young British noble travelling Europe on the contemporary Grand Tour with another charming noble, Augustus, who becomes sick and dies, his body turning black almost instantly. Apparently Byron intended Augustus to re-appear but never finished the story or identified him conclusively as a vampire. Polidori cribs his entire first act from The Burial and the character of Ruthven is clearly an amalgamation of Augustus and Byron himself, reflecting his disillusionment with the great man (he would go on to 'cast' Byron as Satan himself in his theological epic poem 'The Fall Of The Angels'). Ruthven, like a classic vampyre, exsanguinates his victims with a strange knife, and some have connected Harker's kukri to the dagger Aubrey acquires from Ruthven, showing he is falling under the vampire's power compared to Quincey Morris's more honest, Western bowie knife.

Before the release of 'Nosferatu (2022)' Eggers indicated he wanted to truly restore the vampire as something to be afraid of, and his rotting-meat-smelling, brutal Orlok - who bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain fascist dictator who is once again in the news for his perceived influence on moden politics - certainly shows an intent in this direction. But as always, never underestimate the capacity of fandom to 'ship' even an abuser with his victim, and of course there have already been fics and artwork by fans preferring to see Ellen with the monstrous Orlok than her committed husband. And it can't be argued that Eggers doesn't to some extent play into this, with the night-time 'courting' scenes where Orlok appears to Ellen demanding her submission framed to create a frisson of tension despite her angry refusals ('he's so tall', Twitter shippers whitter).

Orlok can be and almost certainly will be read as bisexual; his feeding on Thomas over several nights is framed as a date-rape like experience; Thomas loses track of time, with the naked, fresh-from-the-coffin Orlok lying over his body to feed. After this he psychically tells Ellen 'Your husband is lost to you'. I think he also feeds on Thomas for three days and nights then gives his wife the same amount of time to submit to him. Again, this isn’t new - the BBC Dracula foregrounded the question of whether Thomas’s experience with Dracula was sexual, although creator Steven Moffat would only admit to his Dracula being 'bihomicidal’.

This ambiguity, however, can even be read back into 'The Vampyre', where a seemingly dying Ruthven swears Aubrey to reveal nothing about the events of their European travels together for a year and a day (a scandalous note thee), which Ruthven then exploits to seduce Aubrey's sister and feed on his wife. You can see, I hope, the legacy of Polidori in Stoker's plot 80 years later! This promise takes on a supernatural compulsion and Aubrey finds he cannot break it.

This leads us to a little-explored angle of vampire lore. 'The Vampyre' is in some ways also a legal thriller, exploring the consequences of being bound to silence by a powerful man, and sits in that category of Edwardian and Victorian fiction that is fascinated by the idea of binding contracts, legal trickery, and inheritance; a new invisible power which was becoming preeminent in society, and by which even foreigners could exercise spooky 'influence' over your actions and possessions.

And this is reflected in subsequent vampire fiction; Harker's contract gives Dracula a foothold in Britain through the medium of legitimately purchased English land. Orlok tricks Hutter into signing a contract that, unknown to him, gives Orlok power over his wife. Even the vampire's strengths and weaknesses are legal in nature - you must invite me in; she must give herself to me of he own free will (never mind the coercion implied by killing her friends and family), I must sleep in the soil I was buried in. There are clear rules and limitations, which are a key part of horror.

The old saw is that a criminal with a gun is not a suitable 'horror' monster, not because he's human, but because he's too powerful - if he crooks his finger, you die. He doesn't have to sleep in his grave dirt, crosses don't impress him, garlic (probably) doesn't repel him. To make him scary you have to create limitations - but perhaps more crucially, the rules can't be entirely known.

A good example is The Oldest View, a YouTube found-horror film by Kane Pixels, and particularly its third installment The Rolling Giant. The titular Giant is a lumbering art project, found in an explicably subterranean mall. It's not clear what it does to you if it catches you, but the rules are at first clearly established; it moves when you aren't looking at it, and it's a big physical thing with wheels; it can't fit on the escalators throughout the complex. Until it's revealed that no, you, and the nameless protagonist, are just making assumptions about the situation - it can absolutely move when you're looking at it, and it can breeze up escalators in ways that seems impossible. The shock at the rules being broken is the source of the horror.

With that in mind, how would I go about a vampire movie? What's left to say? What makes us afraid? What made us afraid when Byron wrote 'The Burial' and Polidori wrote 'The Vampyre'? I think the answer is - the rules weren't known. Vampires were not familiar to their audience and were something out of their experience; a threatening breaking of the rules of life and death. Over time we've grown to understand the rules of the vampire and creators like Murnau have added more.

So, what's needed? Something that takes us back to the origins of the vampire and makes them less comprehensible, not more. With that I give you:

Simon Regan's 'Deathbird'.

We open with the story of 'The Burial'. Our hero, a young British noble, is travelling Europe on the Grand Tour and meets a kindly old man who travels with him. They are waylaid by bandits who call the old man a vampire and kill him. Before dying the old man swears the protagonist not to speak of anything that has happened for a year and a day.

Back home, our protagonist weds and enjoys the high life. He is invited to a social event at (Carfax Abbey?). A new European noble has moved in and hosts terrific, Great Gatsby-esque parties with unlimited wealth, and takes an immediate liking to our hero's sister.

Our hero finds himself unable to tell anyone about his experiences and suspicion that Ruthven is a strigoi, a 'deathbird', and experiences various horrifying events including the death of his wife.

This is all framed like nightmare sequences - nothing about the strigoi is entirely 'real', and his true form is a series of overlapping, wing-like shadows that cover everything around him. Ruthven is engaged to marry his sister on the day before his vow expires and our hero suffers a stroke.

He finally recovers and is able to reveal the identity of Ruthven but too late - he has already killed his sister. Our hero and his allies now travel back to Turkey to track down Ruthven, now at the height of his power.

In a shocking moment, Ruthven emerges victorious and even our hero's final act of self-sacrifice, trapping himself in the manse with Ruthven and burning it down, is in vain.

Ruthven's final act is to spare our hero by dripping his own blood into his mouth, turning him into a vampire before leaving him in the same place he found the old man.

We finish with an entire recitation of Robert Graves' 'Goliath and David'. It's a brutal ending that mirrors 'The Great Gatsby'. If that's too dark, have the hero kill Ruthven but be left a vampire himself, and finish instead with "l'humaine sagesse était tout entière dans ces deux mots: attendre et espérer!" - the final line of 'The Count Of Monte Cristo', another clearly Polidori-inspired novel given Dumas overtly references Ruthven therein.

In his noble form, Ruthven is young and handsome, however I think it's only a disguise; when he unfolds his 'wings', which are shown as dark shadows wrapped around his body, what's inside is little more than a skeleton (not sure about this; perhaps there's literally nothing inside the wings). He can move the wings to turn into a 'bat', 'mist', or a 'dog', and slips over the ground like a shadow cast by an invisible light. Possibly he does need to alight at Robin Hood Bay, or we hear of a shipwreck there.

My initial idea which I think is way too 'Fight Club', is that when they exhume the body in Turkey it is that of the protagonist Aubrey, who realises that he is a projection of the Deathbird and not a real person. This really does drive the concept a long way into sci-fi and at that point I think we have to blend in 'A Ghost Story (2017)', with the main character waiting in the same place until history starts again and he is able to kill Ruthven the second time around.

So blending all these together:

Aubrey is a rich young noble on Grand Tour. Travelling in Eastern Europe he meets an old man who gives his name as Augustus. He is an amiable companion though there seems to be something 'off' about him. [The Burial]

They are chased by gypsies and Aubrey assumes they are trying to rob him. However, when they are cornered they say they are here for the old man, who is a vampire. Aubrey speaks up for Augustus and tries to save him but the old man is injured before they can escape and slowly sickens. [The Burial, The Vampyre]

They reach an old ruined house and the old man says to let him rest as he is dying. He compels Aubrey to swear not to reveal the circumstances of his death. After he dies, shadows peel back from his body to reveal a blackened corpse. Aubrey is horrified but buries the body as best he can. [The Burial]

Some time has passed. We're reintroduced to Aubrey and his young wife Ianthe (does he tell Augustus he is engaged?). He is struggling to re-adjust to work in a real estate firm. (Do we re-hash the land purchase plot?) [Dracula]

New neighbour in Carfax Abbey; European noble. Aubrey receives invite. Lavish, futuristic party akin to 'Great Gatsby' movie. [The Vampyre, The Great Gatsby]

They meet Count Ruthven (pronounced rutt-vane) who hints he knows Aubrey. At the end of the party he tells him 'Remember your vow', shocking him. [The Vampyre, The Great Gatsby, The Count of Monte Cristo] [I think he literally says something like 'Can't change the past? Of course you can', in a Gatsby reference, which alludes to the ricorso theory mentioned below]

Strange and unsettling events - colleagues killed to facilitate his promotion, his wife becomes sick. He discovers Ruthven is ruining aristocrats' lives. [The Vampyre, The Count of Monte Cristo]

Ruthven is courting his sister Myna (geddit). He tries to warn her but finds he physically cannot. She becomes concerned about his sanity. [Dracula]

More murders. Ianthe is killed (?). Ruthven now seems to view him as an enemy. Announced he will marry Myna one day before his vow expires. [The Vampyre]

He consults a vampire hunter who convinces the doctor tending to Ianthe (possibly dies after this). Strigoi; deathbirds, not truly physical beings. [Dracula]

Unable to convey the identity of the vampire, he rushes to the wedding, suffering a stroke by doing so. [The Vampyre]

When he recovers, he is able to relate his story to the vampire hunter, but it's too late - his sister is dead and Ruthven has fled the country. [The Vampyre]

The three men (noble, doctor, lawyer) must - kill Ianthe who has turned into a vampire? - then depart to the Continent. [Dracula] - probably just become a ghoul-like creature

When they reach the ruin where Augustus was buried it is now an inexplicable manse. Entering they are subjected to more illusions and horrors. [Phantom Blood, Stardust Crusaders]

Confronting Ruthven he reveals none of their plans work. He has no weaknesses, as far as he is aware, and does not even know why he became a strigoi ("I was neither exceptionally wicked nor exceptionally virtuous"). He doesn't even need to drink blood, he just does it because he's bored. [Phantom Blood]

The doctor and vampire hunter are killed (one of their number is teleported inside a crypt when they stake it). Aubrey finally blocks the entrance and sets the manse on fire, grappling with Ruthven and pulling them both off a balcony into the fire. [Phantom Blood]

Both men survive; Aubrey horribly burned; Ruthven none the worse off. Ruthven tells Aubrey he's made an awful mess but that he will repay 'that favour', and drips black blood from his arm into Aubrey's mouth, converting him into a deathbird. [30 Days of Night]

Having lost everything Aubrey has no desire to move. He waits in the ruin of the house after Ruthven leaves. The house disappears into dust and sand and then is overtaken by a futuristic city, which in turn crumbles, and finally, he is left beside the ancient ruin he saw at the start. [A Ghost Story]

Looking up, he sees two travellers approaching; it's, impossibly, Aubrey and 'Augustus'. As Augustus dies, Aubrey consumes him, and it seems as though, in some unclear way, Aubrey is now Ruthven. He warns his younger self: "For the love of God - flee this place and never return, for there are no more stories to be told here nor sights to see." [Original]

We close with the younger Aubrey reading his wife 'Goliath and David'. She frowns and says "It's a sad poem, and ends badly[I think this is from Lewis Carroll*]. But look! The sun's coming up." [Original]

*It's from 'Sylvie and Bruno Concluded': "It begins miserably, and it ends miserablier. I think I shall cry. Sylvie, please lend me your handkerchief"

How do we differ from other vampire stories?

Strigoi can move around freely at daytime, though it seems like their shadow powers are greatest at night (cf. 'Dracula').

Strigoi have no vampiric weaknesses; their physical body is an illusion and they cannot be staked.

All superstitions about vampires turn out to be false; the gypsies at the start are incorrect to think the old man could be killed, he only feigned death.

Strigoi feed on blood but do not require (?) it. If you instead drink their blood (realising this doesn't sync with shadow-being) you become one of them

I think possibly he does require consent, which is why he tricks the protagonist into swearing to him, or at least some of his powers require you to make contract with hi

Deathbird is deliberately confusing to make you second-guess the genre tropes. I don't think we ever use the term 'vampire', it's 'strigoi', and he's a bird not a bat

Possibly we do need to alter the start so the hero 'saves' the old man with his own blood when he cries out for water, then at the end Ruthven returns the favour. In the Burial, the protagonist knows Augustus Darvell already and he makes him swear to conceal the manner of his death. Another take would be that the young noble joins in with the vampire hunt at the start, unearthing and impaling a body which to his horror is that of his travel companion. Then after returning to England, Ruthven 'haunts' him.

Remember that in The Vampyre, being fed on by a vampire causes consumption.

Also - an important point. I was unsure how to integrate the dagger from 'The Vampyre' but I think I know how. Augustus gifts the dagger to Aubrey, and then we see Ruthven owns a very similar dagger. When a victim is exsanguinated with a dagger, Aubrey is suspected. At some point one of the 'two' daggers is lost or confiscated by police (probably Aubrey's). At the end, when he turns Aubrey, Ruthven gives him 'his' dagger, which Aubrey then uses to kill and absorb Augustus in the next cycle. The point being that 'Ruthven's' dagger probably also comes from a previous cycle. At some point the characters discuss the ricorsos or cycles of Giambattista Vico and wonder if this isn't a form of reincarnation; all else being the same 'we' live the same lives in each cycle, for good or ill. Except, of course, that the cycles can't be identical, the sun brightens and dims and will one day burn out, the mountains wear down. If a man could live from one cycle to the next he could nudge everyone onto a more positive course. It's hinted that for all his bloodthirstiness this is what Ruthven may be doing, and it may well be that every incarnation of Ruthven is a fusion of the last one with Aubrey; meaning there may be no Augustus/Ruthven at all.

To make explicit what we're trying to do here - this is going back to the very start of the vampire genre; back to when the rules weren't known and the 'vampyre' was something alien and threatening to the reader. The rules about the strigoi/strix are never made clear and there may not be any rules other than the flagrant violation of the normal order of life and death. Just as The Vampyre blended modern ideas of hypnosis and criminal investigation and Dracula was the first techno-thriller, Deathbird stirs in sci-fi ideas about history repeating, time-travel and paradox. And the villain wins, which means that in any future horror movie the villain might also win, leaving you with a terror that goes beyond the film itself, bringing back the true fear of loss; even if the very last scene holds out hope that 'we' might be reunited with our loved ones in a future ricorso.

I should also note that the strigoi also somewhat resembles the kitsune in Falling As They Might, as a sort of reality-restructuring presence that can appear human.

Some sketches on the Deathbird's design. The main image I had is this blackened, nearly skeletal corpse rising from the waist up out of a black 'flower' of wing-like shapes, sort of like an anti-Buddha in a dead lotus flower (which is a cool angle given that the Deathbird stays alive and 'attached' to the world throughout the ages and cycles of reincarnation, denying itself and others release). The other has the wings outstretched similar to a biblical cherub, with some wings infolded to cover parts of the corpse-like being within but the 'head' being a single wing folded like a paper crane. This could even be the movie poster and main image - a partially-obscured skeleton enfolded by black paper origami.

Another idea has the Deathbird partially manifested, so the legs and lower torso look normal and clothed but the waist upwards is a tangle of moving black leaf-shaped 'wings', through which a skeletal form can be dimly glimpsed, but which as they move can be observed not to really be there. A big issue here is the Gorcha/Schreck vampire look is hard to take seriously, while an animated skeleton is also not very credible and also too far from the vampire idea.

Another idea is literally an owl-monster but I think this looks a bit lame. Possibly, in line with 'I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness' video for 'The Owl', at some point it takes the form of a giant owl's face, looking at Aubrey in the darkness. Another idea is that the 'true' form of the Deathbird is a nude skeletal form (think Orlok at the end of Eggers' 'Nosferatu') whose face and shoulders are always covered by a black translucent cloth, and who is possibly surrounded by the 'wings'. I say 'true' as I think we need to reinforce that there's not a physical corpse in there; any 'form' the Deathbird takes is being 'projected' into the space between the wings

Explicating the 'time travel' - it isn't, actually. Rather, the Deathbird world obeys the 'ricorso' theory of Giambattista Vico (though actually referring to Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence). History keeps repeating with the same people and events, and the only people who are free to change things are immortals, who can live long enough to see the next cycle.

#dracula #nosferatu #kanepixels #theoldestview #therollinggiant

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