Is Bill Skarsgård’s 2024 film Nosferatu scary?

Horror is my favorite genre, but it usually doesn’t scare me. I’m not bragging about how brave I am (trust me, there are a lot of things that scare me – I have a panic attack any time I have to get on a plane), but I’m just pointing out that I’ve spent a lot of time in the horror genre. That I became desensitized to it. I still love and appreciate horror movies, but they rarely make me scared. So when I see a horror movie that manages to reach me on a primal emotional level, I’m impressed. and “Nosferatu” by Robert Eggers A new take on the silent classic “Dracula” and F.W. Murnau’s film, it seems to accomplish the impossible: it’s scary!

To be fair, horror, like comedy, is a very personal genre. What scares one person may seem funny to others. In my experience, a large segment of the general public associates “jump scares” with horror. I don’t want to start talking about jump scares, but I will say this: while Some jump scares can be effective and impressivea lot of filmmakers use it in lazy and cheap ways (the most stereotypical example is when a harmless cat jumps out of nowhere, screaming and startling the characters on screen). In my humble opinion for horror movie fans, the jump scare is not what makes a horror movie scary. The kind of fear I crave is on a psychological and emotional level. I’m talking about him Awe; The unshakable feeling that something is up mistake In an almost indescribable way. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is considered an expert in this matter, and his films include “Pulse” and “Cure.” And “Resonance” this year They all manage to scare me with the way they create an overwhelming sense of dread.

When I sat down to watch Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” I more or less knew what I was getting into. I’ve seen almost every “Dracula” movie out there, and know the story inside and out. Eggers’ film certainly doesn’t change much in terms of the story. It follows the very similar rhythms of both Murnau’s original and many other adaptations of “Dracula.” However, despite my prior knowledge, Eggers’ film actually scared me. how? What is the secret?

The main element that makes Eggers’ “Nosferatu” so scary is its eerie atmosphere. Working with cinematographer Jarren Blaschke (who also shot Velma Eggers, “The Lighthouse” and “The North Man”), the director conjures the nightmarish atmosphere right from the jump. In a short prologue, we watch as Elaine (Lily-Rose Depp), a young woman, is attracted to and tormented by a mysterious and enigmatic figure. We know, of course, that this character is Count Orlok, an ancient vampire that Ellen has linked to her own grieving soul. Eggers wisely keeps Orlock, played by Bill Skarsgård, off camera for as long as possible.

Before he makes his grand entrance, we follow Ellen’s husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) as he leaves Germany and heads to Transylvania to seal a land deal with Orlok. Before arriving at Orlock Castle, Thomas stops at a local inn, where the superstitious locals mock him. He later witnessed a strange ceremony in which these locals exhumed a body and placed a metal stake through its chest, filled with blood and gore. The moment is broken when Thomas wakes up in his bed, terrified. Was it all a nightmare? Or did he actually witness this barbaric event? It’s not clear, and that’s the point. Things get even stranger and surreal from here, as Thomas heads to Orlok’s castle almost in a daze. Snow falls, the camera swoops, and things look positively strange. When Thomas finally confronts Orlok, the vampire remains mostly invisible, but we hear his deep, raspy voice.

Thomas’s scenes in Orlok’s castle are the most poignant for me. Anyone who has ever had a bad fever probably remembers the strange feeling it brings. Everything you look at you feel strange Somehow subtle. It’s as if your brain is boiling in your skull and frying your thoughts, causing your perception to become skewed. Eggers is able to recreate this very feeling as Thomas, in a kind of hypnotic stupor, falls under Orlock’s spell.

From here, “Nosferatu” becomes more disturbing as Orlok heads to Germany and sets his sights on Eileen and those around her. While the story of a vampire who becomes obsessed with an innocent victim is well rooted in horror lore, Eggers’ “Nosferatu” finds ways to add interesting twists to the formula. Ellen, a woman prone to seizures, seems to believe that her depressive nature has somehow conjured Orlok; It’s as if it’s a physical representation of her troubled mind. Orlok, in turn, seems drawn to Elaine because her melancholy spirit resembles a kind of catnip; He can’t resist her. These two characters are locked in a kind of psychosexual drama, with Depp’s performance evoking a wild physicality Isabelle Adjani’s unforgettable work in the film “Possession”.

All of this creates an almost claustrophobic sense of doom in the film that is only enhanced by the cold, wintry setting (the film is set around Christmas, and there’s even a candlelit Christmas tree in one scene). Later, when one of the film’s characters opens a coffin and cradles the corpse of a loved one, the mood becomes too sombre to bear, which only serves to enhance the overall horror.

At the same time, Eggers remembers having a little fun with his bleak film. Almost everything Willem Dafoe does as the vampire hunter Van Helsing elicits laughs, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson is very entertaining as a man who seems incredibly annoyed that the women in the film are being so hysterical about this vampire business. But it’s the overwhelming sense of dread that makes “Nosferatu” so effective, and as its haunting final frames arrive, it’s hard not to be moved by what Eggers has created.

“Nosferatu” is in theaters now.