The Nosferatu press tour is keen on branding this film as a gothic romance, too. I think the narrative leans more into the formerâconsidering the stalking, the hauntingâbut the romance aspect shines through in the movieâs visuals, which will appeal to a particular melancholic sect of the blog generation: aesthetically feminine and already hypnotized by religious imagery, still lives of dripping candles, baroque dressing rooms, strings of seed pearlsâbut also antique knives, cigarettes, and controlled spillage of blood. Movies like Black Swan have had their essence live on via film stills and memes associating various goods with an aesthetic. The final scene in the movie is a shot of Depp curled next to a decrepit male figure like Pompeiian victims, surrounded by flowers. I already see it reblogged for years to come.
Speaking of digital romanticism, the visuals were what stuck with me while watching Herzogâs Nosferatu a few weeks agoâfive black coffins in a funeral motorcade, or Isabel Adjani, apple of the internetâs eye, in all whiteâsince compared to Eggersâs version, the 1979 Count Orlok seemed anachronistically campy. Is Eggersâs the scariest because Iâm jaded and over-exposed to gory content of all sortsâfictitious or otherwise?
Eggersâs Nosferatu does pay homage to versions past: Many initial glimpses of Orlok are of his shadow, a technique that expounds upon German Expressionism. The castleâs bleached, sparse interior also looks a lot like the one in Herzogâs film, and this new Nosferatuâs recurring motifsâswarming rats, Catholic totems, a beach pock-marked with wonky gravesâsimultaneously pays tribute and blows dust off the hundred-year-old story.
But maybe the dust is subjective, because my friend Maia Wyman, who critiques movies for a living, says Murnauâs 1922 film is her favorite version. We saw Herzogâs version together, and post-screening we talked about Nosferatus pastâMurnauâs version visualizes the contagion, exoticism, and sexual fluidity emblematic of its interwar context, she told me. Some people on X are saying that Herzogâs version predicted AIDs, was all I could contribute. Sounds like a lot of legacy to live up to. But Wyman noted that our current moment shares a lot of similarities with the Weimar era. âOur briefly permissive culture is increasingly fearful and restrictive,â she said, sagely. And there are folk devils being made all around us, so maybe another Nosferatu adaptation is more necessary than ever.
