By Charles Cleveland

On December 25th Universal Pictures released Nosferatu, the third iteration of the original 1930s film and a spin off of the classic story of Dracula. The key difference is, Dracula stories are more often portrayed as melodramatic films about wealth and power in a gothic style, like in the 1931 Dracula, while the Nosferatu stories are darker, and more horror focused. 

This strange well done work has a great balance of horror, romance, action, and character development that earned it a 84% critic score on rotten tomatoes. 

But what do the real, hard nosed critics of Field News think? For this review, we will be evaluating 3 main factors that apply to it as a Horror/Mystery movie: Story, character development, and scare factor.

The story of Nosferatu centers around Ellen Hutter, played by Lily-Rose Depp, and her relationship with Count Orlok, played by Bill Skarsgård. Count Orlok is given immortality, so long as he stays out of the sun and returns to where he was buried each night. 

He bonded with Ellen Hutter years before the story begins, while she was kept alone in a tower by her father at a young age. But after she ended their relationship, Count Orlok was thrust back into his loneliness, and spent the following years making a plan to get back to her. 

The story itself is about Count Orlok finding Ellen, tricking her husband into selling him land near their home, and threatening death on all those she loves if she does not go with him. For much of the story the men are focused on protecting her, but in the end it is Ellen that tricks Count Orlok into sunlight and kills him, saving her loved ones, but killing her in the process. 

Ellen being the savior in the end draws directly from the original film, and the story was still quite good because of the journey that the movie went through to get to that conclusion. Her mania caused by Count Orlok and the characters that are introduced because of it all elevate the story to decent highs with incredible acting and great chemistry. 

The characters of Nosferatu are incredibly well written, and the acting is the highlight of the movie. Lily-Rose Depp does a great job at portraying Ellen Hutter, with the best part of her performance being her fits of mania and psychosis caused by Count Orlok telepathically (which is glossed over in the movie). Between her cries and screams, to the dead face delivery of the lines while possessed, her performance was genuinely off-putting 

The other stand out performance was Willem Dafoe, playing Albin Eberhart Von Franz, the Doctor who specializes in alchemy, mysticism, and the occult. Dafoe plays the character with a sense of kindness and whimsy, despite Von Franz being a specialist in more morbid subjects. Von Franz is sympathetic to Ellen’s state, and their interactions always have the feeling of a father daughter dialogue. Dafoe’s acting gives the audience a safe space in the tense movie, because even in the darker scenes, his character is warm, or at least interesting. The rest of the supporting cast also does well, but nothing else outstandingly notable.

Finally, the scare factor was solid for a movie that tried to lean into the more haunting style of horror, rather than the modern gratuitous violence or existential dread. The 1800s aesthetic contributed to this very well, with much of the movie being dimly lit, which adds a creepy, dark feeling, as if anything could be lurking around the corner.

As mentioned before, Lily Rose Depp’s manic episodes are quite horrifying as well, because of the effort she puts into them, and her deep terror afterwards. Her jolting movements and screams add a supernatural element to her very human character that is jarring for viewers.

The special effects used on Count Orlok are the only part of the movie that takes the viewer out of the dreary horror atmosphere so carefully cultivated by the film, and leans into a more campy feeling that can feel out of place. His prosthetics are over the top, and while his looming figure is unnerving in the beginning of the movie when we only see his shadow, the makeup done on Bill Skarsgård’s face seemed too cartoonish for the more serious movie.  

Overall, the movie gets about seven out of ten. Definitely worth watching, and probably a fun movie to watch around halloween or with some friends, but I would not watch this on my own for my own enjoyment.