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vickyvicarious · 6 months ago

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To anyone who is interested, here is my thoughts on Nosferatu (2024). In briefest sum: it's not my thing. I didn't really like it by large.

To be a little longer, but still remain mostly spoiler-free: There are several elements running throughout the movie. There's stuff taken directly from the original Nosferatu, there's stuff added in from Dracula, and there's also some elements that appear to me to be informed by other adaptations or reputation, as well as more modern tastes in the way horror movies operate. It is definitely still a horror, and for people who like this style of horror, I think a lot of them would enjoy it. Personally, I'm not super into gore or sexual horror scenes. There are definitely several of both. In general I like more subtle psychological horror, and in a lot of ways I think this movie is pretty in-your-face about what it does. That is a personal preference for me, though, and definitely not universal.

Also, while I find the combination of elements interesting, in several places I personally feel like it weakens characterization or at least my interest in the characters. That said, some character things that fans of Dracula like would probably include: Orlock is definitely still evil/hated by all. Thomas and Ellen (the Harker figures) are in love, and both protagonists we're meant to root for. There are also a lot of added scenes that call back to various events in the book. On the other hand, there is some degree of Ellen/Orlock that is likely a major turnoff for a lot of people, and also Friedrich (the Arthur figure) is definitely not our Art. Also, many of the callback scenes involve similar events, but almost inevitably twisted in some way, either to fit the changed place in the plot, the different characters, or to feed in to horror scenes that are more gory/sexual than you'd see in either original book or movie.

Finally, more specific spoilers under the cut:

Sorry in advance but this is more of a ramble than any specific progression throughout the plot.

I think that the story wanted to have its cake and eat it too a little bit in regards to the original book, the original film, and to pop-culture derived interpretations of Dracula themes and characters. I also think there was a degree of playing in to more typical modern horror expectations. Some of my thoughts on this are pretty suppositional because I don't actually like watching horror movies much and also haven't seen any film adaptations of Dracula (aside from the original Nosferatu and now this one). So feel free to disregard me if I'm wrong on any of those points. But I feel like there are several scenes that either alter events or add in gratuitous nudity or violence just because that's expected.

Like, for example, when Thomas arrives in the town near the castle. There's a whole odd scene where a bunch of people are dancing around and then kind of mocking him before he gets into the inn. Once there, we have a scene more like in the original movie (OM from here on out) where there's horrified reaction to him saying he's going to the castle, and also similar to the original book (OB) where he is given a crucifix. Then we have a scene that seems like a "queer dreams" reference (but when he wakes his shoes are muddy showing it really happened) where he follows a bunch of locals leading a naked virgin on a horse to a grace where they then stake a vampire. I think this is the same group who were outside the inn mocking him, though I'm not totally sure.

The staking scene irked me more in hindsight because it seemed to be suggesting a possible alternate ending, with the virgin potentially 'distracting' the monster's attention while its body was staked. I kind of wondered near the end if this was going to happen to some extent with Ellen taking out the shadow and Orlock's spirit while the men staked his physical body. Now, that too would be off from both originals and was entirely my own theory so it not being fulfilled isn't really a knock on the movie, but... While I guess we can see the connection here, the actual way the whole "pure woman offers herself to the vampire to kill it" plays out later has nothing really to do with this scene. So it still feels kind of like there was no point having her there, since all she did was ride naked on a horse, and so it felt more contrived to show a boob than really relevant to me. The people also are weird because of this. Are they in Orlock's employ and scornful of Thomas? Are they opposed to vampires and want to protect him? There's a weird mix, only increased when everyone is gone when he awakes (including the innkeepers) and have stolen his horse. I didn't feel like their behavior made sense.

OrlocI did like several of the trippy bits about Thomas' journey to the castle (though the empty carriage reminded me more of Curse of Strahd, haha), and some of the parts of him being there. The scenes where he is eating with Orlock and where he's being pressured into signing a contract he can't read are pretty good moments of him having to try and keep calm and polite while freaking out hugely internally, though it's all much more condensed and quick to become blatant attacks on him than the OB. But that itself is more similar to the OM. The scene when Orlock makes him say "my lord" instead of "sir" is pretty funny. I also quite liked the way Orlock turned his excuse to leave ("I've been having horrible dreams since getting here, I think I'm ill") against him into a reason he must stay ("It's not good to travel when you're sick, you must stay here until you get better"). From the book, we get scenes like Thomas asking about local traditions and being shut down, running frantically about after learning he's trapped, being threatened by wolves, and escaping out the window. But the way it happens is typically very different, with Orlock just having some wolves in his crypt apparently. Thomas going in there and opening up the coffin to see him isn't really led up to in any way, other than him running around searching for an exit. We do get an attempted shoveling, except it's not a shovel but a pickaxe, there's no apparent reason for it to be sitting there, and Orlock (who apparently sleeps totally naked) physically repels the blow and then chases after him/shadows him and then drinks him while also humping him. He wakes up in his bed afterwards, and escapes out the window while fleeing wolves that have been sent to attack him after Orlock (presumably) leaves. Then he falls into the river.

I think in general his character is closest to the equivalent OB character. He loves his wife intensely, and is determined to return to her and to protect her/kill the vampire who harmed her. There are still some really unfortunate moments where he tells her to ignore her creepy dreams and basically be normal (as well as disregarding her warnings not to leave, though that at least I seem to remember happening in the OM), and he's the one to say of course she'll be left behind when hunting vampires. But he never seems to think about leaving her, and definitely loves her a lot throughout. I also like him getting a limp after his escape from the castle, showing some lingering physical effect. Though he also apparently has bite marks since he shows them to people later on.

Von Franz is shown to be more lost in his 'crazy' theories than Van Helsing. He also is too willing to sacrifice others, and kind of has a crazy monologue while setting a bunch of stuff on fire which feels super out of character. But he plays a smaller part and I liked both him not being shown as a super vampire hunter (the one scene when Friedrich asks him how to kill the demon he's talking about and he's just like "I dunno, I've never actually seen one of these before" was funny) and him having respect for Ellen. He insists she not be tied up and empathizes with her psychic nature being preyed upon, being clear that the results are not her fault. Dr. Siever plays a really small role, and Knock (the Hawkins/Renfield medley) is just as comically evil as he is in the OM. He does get naked in a pentagram and gnaw on animals/people onscreen, but doesn't have a huge role. I had fun laughing at Orlock carrying his own coffin in the original but sadly no luck in that regard thanks to Knock escaping to help him.

Friedrich irks me the most because he's got a larger role and it's so different from Arthur. While Emma (Lucy) doesn't do too much, she's at least still a good friend to Ellen. He clearly doesn't like her from the start and just kind of puts up with her weirdness because of other people. He's a loving husband and father and that's where the most sympathy for him comes in, but also skeptic who hates the influence on his life that Ellen brings and has a hard time believing Von Franz about supernatural causes. While Siever apparently suggested it in the first place, he still is the one who approves tying Ellen up, and he's a jerk to her about her not being normal and not doing what he tells her. Not to mention kicking the Hutters out in the middle of a plague! As well as trying to flee when his wife is already suffering from the plague. He does traumatically lose his whole family, and he gets the shadow keeping him asleep while his children were killed, which originally happened to Jonathan while Mina was attacked. The scene of the nosferatu carelessly dropping a dead child reminded me of vampire!Lucy tossing aside a child in the graveyard. And in fact, having Emma be the only one awake rushing about to try and save her family and having to face the vampire alone is sort of similar to the night of Lucy's memorandum if you squint. I absolutely hated Friedrich's ending - he's visibly caught the plague and wanders off to the graveyard where he then has sex with his dead (not undead, just dead) wife and then dies doing so? Euch. If they just left out the necrophilia then it would feel much more coherent to his character, just kind of selfish and very intentionally 'normal' but still deeply loving his family and losing it after their loss. But that just seemed kind of thrown in there to add to the erotic horror to me, and since I don't like it, well. I didn't like it.

Ellen, now... it's hard to talk about her character in this without also talking about Orlock. But let me start with just her and then get to that after. They lean way in on the psychic Ellen from the OM, which I initially quite liked. She also seems to deeply love Thomas, though there are some later scenes that add a weird dynamic there. One being she only became 'normal' when she met him, and so he seems kind of like an escape from her psychic dreads. I initially really liked her connection to him when he was on his trip. She gave him a token of her hair in a locket, which she cut while staring psychically out into the night, and it seemed like it was linking her to him. Then, when Orlock took the locket, the connection seemed to contribute with her sometimes overlapping with Orlock in a way I initially thought was kind of cool. I really liked the way the actress did her own version of the clawed hands and the Orlock walk/silhouette, she embodied that really well.

The sexualized trances/dreams and seizures were definitely not to my taste thought, and the whole more Exorcist-style scenes where she seemed almost outright possessed didn't really make full sense to me most of the time. I really disliked what the story behind them and her connection to Orlock ended up being. Apparently she psychically reached out to something dark in her lonely youth and ended up waking him/making some sort of marriage pact with him? This is what aroused his interest in her all along and seemed to drive many of his actions. And while we do see that she hates him consciously, and outright rejects and insults him to his face in one scene, there's all this stuff where she seems very drawn to him despite that. I really hated the Hutton sex scene. It was bound up in an argument between them during which she seemed to at least partially believe Orlock's words about Thomas selling her (this was apparently the contract he couldn't read but signed because Orlock was menacing him) for a bag of gold. She also throws in his face that he's never satisfied her like her dream lover (the nosferatu). She seems to be getting partially possessed or something throughout this fight. She takes on the nosferatu posture and uses a different voice, but it's not made clear how much of this is some influence against her or her own inner darkness or her actual thoughts. Thomas looks scared of/for her and also freaked out by how crazy she seems, and then she crawls up to him begging for no doctor and then they have aggressive sex while she commands him to kiss her heart. That in particular makes it seem like she's trying to emulate her dream sex with the nosferatu, since he's always shown to bit the chest/over the heart. So that left a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth.

Again, we do see that she loves Thomas and wants to save him. But the eroticization of the vampire feeding (once again, they are clearly having sex while he drinks her blood. The only reason I wasn't a hundred percent sure this happened with Thomas is because he at least was wearing clothes thought Orlock was naked at the time) combined with the visual horror of making Orlock look so open-wound and corpsey combined to have a really weird feel of just wanting to show a woman having sex with a horrible monster. The sexual horror thing... but she agreed to it, yes as a plan to kill Orlock, but what with the dreams thing and her making sex noises and whatnot it kind of seems like she's enjoying it too. Then when they find her body there's this kind of weird detail where she has a hand holding Orlock to her chest (she drew him back down and asked him to drink more blood when he started to notice the onset of dawn) and Thomas takes her other hand, and it feels symbolic somehow. Her lover being death and her husband reaching out for her but her clinging death closer... I dunno. The whole sex and dream connection/prolonged haunting aspect made it seem a lot less resigned sacrifice than it did in the OM, and definitely way more of her being drawn to him in return than in the OB.

Orlock himself was a pretty nice mix of Dracula and OM Count for most of it I think. I liked when he called himself nothing but hunger, it feels like it leaned in more to his OM counterpart. Using Thomas's fate against her (and before that, the Hardings) was very much something OB Dracula would do too. But his whole past with Ellen and consequent fixation on her kind of took over everything he did. And since I didn't like that element... I did love the shadow stuff, and enjoyed when he did the classic nosferatu walk with the hands reaching out, though it wasn't as often. His design was definitely creepy as well.

I liked the plague elements. I also liked the shadow of the vampire, and kind of wish there had been more emphasis put on that. I feel like in the OM, more horror was shown in his movements and his physicality partially just due to the medium. But it was also really iconic, especially the shadow, and I liked the instances when it was used to reflect his influence.

Not a fan of all the thrashing about (sexually and also just seizing/shaking) and drooling/vomiting/blood spilling from mouths. But those are more personal preference and again feel like more modern horror staples to various degrees. My biggest grief is the Orlock/Ellen stuff and how that infects other things around it.

BUT... if you like this sort of story, as I imagine many do, and if you are able to see it as its own thing enough not to get upset with the divergences (for example Orlock/Ellen, or Friedrich vs. Arthur) then I think a lot of people would enjoy this movie.

#nosferatu 2024 #nosferatu critical #not totally negative but as i say not my thing and i give reasons why #so if you loved it probably you'd prefer to skip this post

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