A final deed of consent

By consciously arming his own body, Nosferatu‘s Ellen becomes her own hero.
Photo: Focus functions

Spoilers follow for the 2024 and 1922 versions of Nosferatuincluding the endings of each film.

Calling a vampire movie Ellen doesn’t have the same pizzazz as Nosferatu. But Robert Eggers’s new version of the vampire classic differs precisely for its treatment of the character that FW Murnau’s silent 1922 original defines only as a willing victim in the service of her husband. Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen, meanwhile, pursues redemption for her own sake.

Across his four-feature filmography, Egger’s female characters can be selfish and inscrutable, but it’s almost always a reaction to unsympathetic, patriarchal societies. Think about The witch‘s teenage Thomasin, cruelly mistreated and underestimated by her English-settler parents because she was a daughter, starting over by choosing to live deliciously in community with Black Phillip. Or Queen Gudrun in The Norwegianstarting a new family with her brother-in-law after he killed her husband; whether she was actually abused or pursued her own desires is ambiguous. And while the monstrous mermaid in The lighthouse is not a fully fledged character, her mix of aggression and sensuality towards wickie Ephraim Winslow is one of the film’s defining motifs, a representation of both the allure and unknowability of the natural world and perhaps of a woman’s mind.

The women in Eggers’ films tend to be likable, but their motivations aren’t always clear — a pattern he breaks with Depp’s Ellen. Like Anya Taylor-Joy’s Thomasin, she is a young woman whose childhood alienation was caused by an unhappy home life, and who turns to an older, evil man for what she perceives as attention and self-actualization. (Taylor-Joy was first cast in the role, then dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.) Egger’s adoration of Murnaus Nosferatu — it’s the film that made him want to be a director, as he tells it — results in a good deal of mimicry: He uses the same character names as the original German film, and he maintains many of the silent film’s story beats and visuals, like Nosferatus shadow in malleable size. But compared to its predecessor, this Nosferatu makes room for nearly all of its female characters to have moments of centrality, humanity, and heroism. That expansion is most evident in the film’s ending, which recreates but also reframes Ellen’s fatal sacrifice.

Ellen no longer dies to save her husband, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), an act of martyr-like courage or a self-imposed refrigerator. In the context of Eggers’ extended story about Ellen, the young bride chooses not just to spend a night with Count Orlok; she chooses to return to her past shame of having a relationship with him in the first place, redeeming herself by using that relationship to defeat him. Ellen’s final act is not a giddy surrender. It is a springboard for an exploration of consent. Within this new Nosferatuthe titular vampire is a stalker, an obsessive, a bad boyfriend who harangues and harasses and won’t leave his ex alone, especially when he finds out she’s happily moved on. Nosferatu, who haunts Ellen’s dreams, is basically him slipping into her DMs, and the sexualized nightmares he forces her into are some sort of revenge porn. This guy stinks! Eggers counters that by fleshing out Ellen’s characterization, writing her as a woman more graphically torn apart by Nosferatu’s meddling and more clearly driven to regain control of her own physicality and sexuality.

“The Maiden on Horseback” (Katerina Bila).
Photo: Focus functions

A century ago, Ellen was a woman consumed by a vague sense of danger waiting for her husband on his business trip, and then became increasingly captivated by Nosferatu when he sees a small portrait of her in the midst of Thomas’s things . She wore a lot of black, she walked in her sleep, and her story began and ended in connection with Thomas; her first and last moments on screen are both at his side. In contrast Nosferatu begins and ends with Ellen on screen making decisions – impulsive and short-sighted, purposeful and longing – about her own life. In Murnau’s film, she only becomes important midway through the narrative due to Nosferatu’s obsession with her youth and her “lovely neck.” At Eggers, she is the engineer behind her relationship with the vampire. The opening flashback-slash-dream shows us how a desperately sad, undeniably lonely girl cried out for “a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort, a spirit in every celestial sphere, whatever” to give her friendship and intimacy. Nosferatu appears to her in shadow form and woos her with promises of eternity: “You are not for humanity…Will you be the one with me, forever?” And Ellen chooses to be with him, a promise that ends with her moaning and writhing in a half fit, half orgasm. Everything else that happens in the film is tied back to this moment, when Ellen offered her body and pledged her steadfastness to a creature that twisted itself, from her regret at losing her virginity to him (Ellen, you would love Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s “Becoming” arc!) to her realization that only reliving that act voluntarily can defeat Nosferatu for good.

Both films use ancient stories to communicate this mythology, but the wording each film uses is different. In the earlier film, “only one woman can break his fearsome spell—a woman of pure heart—who will offer her blood freely.” In Egger’s version, no “purity” is required. Instead, it requires a “virgin mass” to “sacrifice one’s love to the beast,” an adjustment that is less about preserving a woman’s chastity and virtue and more about encouraging her. Depp plays his character’s final moments with a range of conflicting emotions that let us into Ellen’s mind, from tearful resignation to sensual seduction to bitter determination. Where previously her performance had been a physical miasma of shuddering limbs, gasping moans and outstretched tongues, it becomes focused here, an effort at restraint that reflects Ellen’s singular choice.

Both films require Ellen to trick Thomas into leaving her alone so she can draw Nosferatu to her. In Murnau’s film, this is Ellen and Nosferatu’s only night together, and the focus is on the vampire; his hollow eyes, long claws and kneeling figure are illuminated while Ellen is turned away from the camera, her body a lumpy, indistinct shape on the bed. She opened her bedroom windows and waited for him, but the pair exchanged no words; her act was one of surrender. In Eggers’ film, Ellen’s actions have a powerful force, and we see her face and her body brave and defiant in the frame. This isn’t her and Nosferatu’s first night together (remember she told Thomas about their previous “happiness”), but it’s the first physical consummation of their bond, and she has to make the vampire believe that she doesn’t no longer “denying” herself to him, as he previously accused her of doing. Where he had described himself as “an appetite, nothing more”, she must now convince him of her own cravings. Her tone is docile, her eyes half-closed, her moans softer; as he moves naked on top of her, she fingers the festering sores on his back and pushes his head down onto her breasts, urging him to drink “more, more.” As he begins to shrink in the rays of the rising sun, she holds him in its light and then has her own individual moment of victory – a glimmer of victory in her eyes – before Thomas comes to her side.

All in Eggers’s Nosferatuwomen easily stare down during doom. The “Virgin on Horse” (Katerina Bila), whom Thomas follows to a Romanian cemetery, guides a vampire hunter to the “unclean spirit” the villagers must dig up and kill; she grips the reins with her head held high, a leader rather than a victim. Nuns find Thomas after he escapes Orlok’s castle, offer him refuge despite the danger to themselves, and then nurse him back to health with their knowledge of how to counter the vampire. And back in Germany, Ellen’s best friend, Anna (Emma Corrin), never leaves “Leni”; she loyally defends Ellen against her own heavy-handed husband, Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who complains about Ellen’s “adventures”. “She is blameless for her disease,” Anna insists, and even as Nosferatu infects Ellen’s mind with an “unbearable darkness,” she sympathizes with the mental intrusions her friend had endured for so long. Demonstrating an individuality that complements Ellen’s own arc, these women create a world where she can reclaim her sexual past and strip it of its original humiliation and remorse. By deliberately arming her body, Nosferatu‘s Ellen becomes her own hero.