‘Nosferatu’ remake’s biggest changes to the original film

On By Littum

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Spoiler alert! We discuss plot details from the “Nosferatu” remake (in theaters now). Stop reading if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know.

For almost as long as there have been horror movies, filmmakers have been telling the story of Dracula.

The latest iteration is Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” a remake of the 1922 silent film that was itself an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”

Those expecting a radically different picture may be surprised by how faithful Eggers’ film is to its source material. But the director turns the sexual undertones into overtones, fleshes out the supporting characters and makes several significant changes to ensure his version has bite.

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The ‘Nosferatu’ remake changes Ellen and Orlok’s relationship

The remake’s biggest change is its revelation that young newlywed Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) woke up Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), who returns years later as a jealous ex after she marries Thomas (Nicholas Hoult). In the 1922 version, there is no indication that she is responsible for summoning the Count. Ellen is Orlok’s target in the classic film, but has no pre-existing, darkly romantic connection to him, nor does she have a backstory of past dreams and “spells”.

Like Ellen, Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin), the couple Ellen lives with while her husband is away, are further developed with meatier roles. In the original, Ellen lives with Harding and his sister – not his wife – but doesn’t have much screen time either. Harding wasn’t portrayed as a die-hard skeptic before, he didn’t fall out with Ellen, and Orlok didn’t kill his children. Thomas’s boss Knock’s (Simon McBurney’s) devotion to Orlok is also expanded, including an extra scene where he worships the Count surrounded by candles.

Willem Dafoe’s vampire-hunting professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, meanwhile, is not in the 1922 film. The closest equivalent is Professor Bulwer, a character in the silent film who studies the secrets of nature but has almost no role in the story and only appears in a few brief scenes .

The broad lines of the plot are the same in both versions, but with many details adjusted. Thomas, for example, witnessing the exhumation of a corpse is new. The original has him leave his inn in the morning without finding it deserted. When Thomas arrives at the castle, Orlok is drawn to a locket containing a piece of Ellen’s hair. Orlok was also drawn to a picture of Ellen in the original, but the hair is Eggers’ addition, and Orlok now uses it to talk to her. After Thomas finds Orlok in his coffin, Eggers’ version tries to kill him. Originally he just ran away.

Another tweak with Orlok is that he bites victims in the chest, whereas in the original it was always the neck. Eggers tells USA TODAY that this was inspired by folklore where vampires often drank blood from the chest.

“For a story that is a gothic romance, a tale of obsession and love, there is something poetic about the motif of drinking from the heart,” he notes.

The two films both end with Ellen’s sacrifice, but the remake adds a simultaneous mission to defeat Orlok. No such mission happens in the original. The 1922 version’s climax is more focused on Knock escaping and being hunted by the townspeople for being the scapegoat for the plague. Knock’s escape is less of a focus in the remake, and he is now killed inside a coffin. Knock dies in his cell after Orlok’s defeat in the original.

The ‘Nosferatu’ remake updates the look of Count Orlok as Bill Skarsgård takes on the role

Eggers makes a meal of creating suspense about what the count looks like and keeping him out of focus for long periods of time. It’s a new approach, as in 1922’s “Nosferatu,” Orlok is shown in full without much build-up.

When we finally see him, the new Orlok looks less like the tall, pointy-eared creature played by Max Schreck and more like a zombie, his flesh visibly decaying. This goes back to Eggers’ idea of ​​turning to folklore.

“Early folk vampires walked with rotting corpses,” explains the director. “So then the question becomes, what does a dead Transylvanian noble look like? It looks like this.”

Orlok’s clothes are meant to look like a stripped-down version of “what a Hungarian or Romanian nobleman would have worn in the 16th century,” Skarsgård tells USA TODAY.

Most strikingly, Orlok now sports a moustache, a departure from his original clean-shaven look. Skarsgård says the hairstyle and facial hair were inspired by “actual paintings from that era.”

How does ‘Nosferatu’ compare to ‘Dracula’?

The original “Nosferatu” was essentially a “Dracula” adaptation, but since it was not officially approved, the characters’ names were changed. There were, and still are, a number of differences, namely the idea of ​​the female protagonist defeating the Count by sacrificing herself. Unlike Dracula, Orlok does not turn humans into vampires, and unlike Orlok, Dracula is not killed by sunlight.

Yet the plots of the two films are remarkably similar. So it makes sense that Eggers’ “Nosferatu” draws on “Dracula,” such as with Orlok’s appearance. Like Skarsgård’s Count, Dracula has a mustache in Stoker’s text.

Although Dafoe’s character is not in 1922’s “Nosferatu,” he is clearly a take on the vampire hunter Van Helsing from “Dracula.” Both are recruited by a former student to help a sick woman, pass on key information about the vampire and join a mission to kill him.

Additionally, Anna’s friendship with Ellen is reminiscent of the relationship between Mina — a woman whose fiancé goes on a trip to sell property to a vampire — and her friend Lucy in “Dracula,” and in both cases, that friend dies in the end. In “Dracula”, however, she first becomes a vampire.

The scene in the remake where Knock bites off a bird’s head comes from the book, where Dracula’s servant Renfield eats birds, and Orlok killing the Hardings’ children is reminiscent of the vampire version of Lucy attacking children in the book. Finally, the new film’s finale, which centers on a mission to kill the Count, is much like the climax of “Dracula,” except in the book that led to the Count being successfully assassinated.

Like many great adaptations, Eggers’ version is a mix of inspirations that come together to create a bloody good concoction.

Cast: Brian Truitt