New Year’s Day ushered in two new options for celebratory viewing – Scott Crowley’s We Live in Time and Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. I had to choose how I wanted to start my 2025: either with a depressing domestic drama, or a terrifying erotic horror. After some deliberation, I decided to curse my new year by subjecting myself to Count Orlok’s (or should I say Robert Eggers’) hallucinatory grasp, and subsequently entering a two-hour monochromatic nightmare.

For those uninitiated in German expressionism, Nosferatu (2024) is a remake of the original silent film of the same title, first released in 1922, directed by F. W. Murnau. Eggers’ film chooses to mostly stay true to the source material, whilst embellishing both the plot and visuals with the American director’s signature flair.

“Eggers’ remake manages to recreate iconic cinematic history”

The narrative follows the story of the newlyweds Ellen and Thomas Rutter (Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult). At the beginning of the film, Thomas is made to travel to Transylvania upon the request of his employer, Knock (Simon McBurney), to sell a house to Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), despite his wife’s pleas against the trip. Thomas ignores his wife’s wishes and goes to Orlok’s castle, leaving Ellen in the care of their friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin) who live with their two young children.

What follows this move is the possession of Ellen, who has been under Orlok’s spell since her youth; the death of the Hardings; and a plague across the fictional German town of Wisborg. All of this occurs because of Orlok’s infiltrative presence throughout the town: it stems from his desire to ‘penetrate’ Ellen Rutter. This reign of horror will only come to an end when Ellen sacrifices herself to Orlok, who sucks the blood from her chest from midnight until sunrise. In the original 1922 film, the sun evaporating the vampire was a trailblazing idea, so although 102 years later it may seem to be a tired cliché, Eggers’ remake manages to turn it into an enhanced recreation of iconic cinematic history.

The ending shot of the film is a birds-eye view of the withered Orlok, reverted to dead flesh and bone, possessively draped on top of a dead Ellen whose blood has stained the white sheets. It will be ingrained in me for life. This powerfully grotesque image serves as a reminder that something which should be a right of the human body, in this case blood, can be stolen and lie so close to its home, but yet be unable to ever return.

“The film’s ending shot will be ingrained in me for life”

In this way, the entire film can be read as an allegory for sexual assault and abuse. This final image described is the pinnacle image of a violated woman, something Eggers does not shy away from. Many reviewers of the film have likened the town-wide plague to the aftereffects of sexual assault. Especially in how sexual assault similarly ruins the life and poisons the surrounding of the victim. But Eggers showcases more than just the aftereffects of sexual assault, as the film does not introduce the viewer to a pre-assault Ellen, but rather the abuse inflicted on her is an intrinsic part of her character from the very opening brass note. What the film expertly represents is a character trying to escape and push down their trauma, only for the same trauma to resurface on a wider scale, in a new and physically empowered state.

This underlying metaphor, though such an important one in today’s climate, felt bold to adopt under the guise of a remake of a horror film. These themes were vaguely touched upon in the 1922 film, but not to the heights Eggers takes it to (of course, the contemporary world is very different, and audiences now accept these themes more readily than a century ago). Perhaps if Nosferatu was an original film and therefore did not have the weight of the original on its back, this metaphor could have stuck more willingly. Or perhaps I am simply playing devil’s (vampire’s?) advocate here.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the film, especially on a visual level. Eggers plays with the lighting, rarely exposing people’s faces in full light, and adopting an almost (but not quite) monochromatic colour scheme, which pays a homage to the black and white original. The acting was also phenomenal, although some performances were admittedly more standout than others, particularly Depp, who with her youthful appearance and grovelling line delivery brought a new level of unpalatableness to the character of Ellen. I would recommend this film – though I can imagine for some it may perhaps leave their blood feeling much colder than it was when they first sat down.