In a darkly exquisite “Nosferatu,” Lily-Rose Depp has more bite than the titular vamp

Just a few months after the release of his gripping, gothic feature debut “The Witch” in 2016, director Robert Eggers balked at the enormity of his next option: a remake of FW Murnau’s legendary vampire flick “Nosterfatu”. Sitting down for the “Filmmaker Toolkit” podcast, Eggers joked with host Chris O’Falt: “It feels ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting for a filmmaker in my position to make ‘Nosferatu’ next.” He elaborated by saying that he had planned to wait before taking on his lifelong passion project. But as fate would have it, “Nosferatu” stepped up on its indictment.

But fate is a fickle, unreliable bedfellow, especially for directors. They plan and the studios, production teams and scheduling conflicts laugh. Shortly after the announcement, “Nosferatu” was delayed and more obstacles would come well into the next decade. Fans of Eggers’ work struggled to keep the faith. Murnau’s film was a distinctly German approach to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula“, and its expressionistic style seemed like the ideal putty for Eggers to shape after making a haunting debut feature that shot to the top of so many best-of lists in 2016. Unfortunately, one of the painful realities of being an artist, that the paradigm of an individual’s creative interests can often remain out of reach.

Still, Eggers wasn’t one to twiddle his thumbs. Two more films followed with 2019’s seafaring tale “The Lighthouse” and 2022’s epic Viking fable “The Norwegian” revealed new strengths in writing and directing that hadn’t been immediately apparent in Eggers’ debut. These films confirmed Eggers as a classic storyteller, the kind of person whose yarn would be as effective over a crackling campfire as it is on the screen. They were ambitious works that wore their excellence modestly, which would be critical when “Nosferatu” finally entered production after several years of limping. Only a total lack of hubris could allow “Nosferatu” to arrive as it has: utterly unparalleled. “Nosferatu” is more retelling than remake, like a myth that takes on new, morbid details to petrify the curious as it’s passed down through the years. It’s both heart-stopping and terrifyingly believable, a tale of lust and destruction that will go down as the definitive take on the vampire for this generation.

Eggers’ “Nosferatu” succeeds because the director’s changes to Henrik Galeen’s original 1922 screenplay, which is adapted from Stoker’s novel with a few tweaks, are minimal. The film shares the same narrative structure as previous versions, but fills in sequences that necessitate more introspection to enhance the story’s already enchanting framework. In her newly written prologue, a catatonic young Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) stands shrouded in the night with his hands folded in prayer, begging the universe for a guardian angel. A newly awakened voice answers her call and tells Ellen that she is not for the living before beckoning her to the garden and asking her to pledge her allegiance to the darkness. Besieged, she agrees, and an unholy bond is consummated atop the dewy earth.

Years later, in 1838, Ellen has subdued the melancholy that once walked beside her. Her marriage to Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) dulled her voice of despondency and filled her with love. But the sun no longer shines on their cozy German town, and Ellen prophesies that something is wrong. Thomas’s employer, Mr. Knock (Simon McBurney), must send Thomas away to fetch the insistent Transylvanian noble Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) the deed of a nearby home. Ellen begs Thomas to stay, but their livelihood depends on his commission; there is no happiness that the lure of wealth cannot destroy. Thomas leaves, leaving Ellen in their close friends Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin).

Thomas’ journey to Orlok’s dilapidated castle in the Carpathians is filled with some of the most enchanting footage of both any film this year and Eggers’ career so far. “Nosferatu” often resembles the pages of a macabre children’s story brought to life with winding roads and endless forests that would put the Brothers Grimm to shame. After making his way through a Romanian town filled with zealots who warn Thomas of Orlok’s corruption, he finds himself alone, deep in the snowy forests. A carriage appears in the distance, steadily approaching in Thomas’ vision, while the sound of horses’ hooves mimics his steadily increasing heartbeat. When the coach arrives and pulls up, Thomas finds it empty and the door calmly opens to invite him to ruin. It is pure movie magic, playing with image and sound in the chimerical ways that children do when they are alone in their bedrooms, convincing themselves that the shadows of trees outside are monsters in the corner waiting to bite.

Atmosphere is paramount in Eggers’ film, but it doesn’t do all the heavy lifting. Where this “Nosferatu” differs from Murnau’s original and Werner Herzog’s agonizingly romantic 1979 “Nosferatu the Vampyre” — itself a masterpiece, too little considered in the conversation for my taste — is in its character writing. That is, Eggers’ take is the first “Nosferatu” to really have characters at all: dynamic, three-dimensional, realized people at the bloody, beating heart of the story. But the film’s main asset can be seen in three four-letter words: Lily-Rose Depp. Depp is nothing short of transcendent in front of Eggers’ camera, at once hypnotic and repulsive as Ellen descends into madness in Thomas’s absence. The choice to center Ellen in the story rather than Thomas or Orlok was the right one. Depp brings a truly tragic, spectral quality to the role, performing torment with rattling empathy. If I blinked when she was on screen, I felt like I’d cheated myself out of one more millisecond of rapture, a curse similar to Ellen’s ethereal affliction. The performance is rich and ravenous, and its nuance has to be seen to be believed.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to consistently say the same about Skarsgård’s Orlok, who delivers significant scares but almost feels too conventionally scary for a film so intent on being its own creation. He is large and powerful, a far cry from Max Shreck’s frail but imposing visage in Murnau’s original. And while it’s admirable that Eggers and Skarsgård didn’t simply replicate Shreck’s iconic look—which was a point against Herzog’s remake—this 8-foot-tall, muscular Orlok lacks the furtive calm that made previous versions so creepy. Glimpses of that creepiness come in scenes where Orlok torments Ellen, but when he’s hunting and not joking, Skarsgård overextends himself to the point of being silly. At times, this brings a humor that makes “Nosferatu” feel believable; with others it is laughable. I can’t say, though, that I wouldn’t listen to a half-hour breakdown about Eggers’ choice to give his loathsome Count a decidedly handsome Tom Selleck mustache to make his vamp more like the real-life Vlad the Impaler.

But in a movie this detailed, it feels worthy of the trick, especially since other details are so damn impressive. (Note the film’s title card, which vibrates slightly to evoke silent era film projection.) However, the richest aspects are woven into the film’s thematic framework. Vampires have always been a way for filmmakers to explore and explode the soft evils of society. These ghouls straddle the line between romance and predation, and Eggers’ Orlok is no different, though his version is more concretely imbued with the latter—especially how carnal desire can attract vulture creatures whose longing is not carefully displayed. From an early age, Ellen is filled with longing, both for love and for the flesh. Her hunger is not immoral, just ruthless. This desire is the progenitor of a curse that will destroy everything she loves, and as Eggers dives into that dark, woefully depressing extreme, he curses a culture so hell-bent on endless, instant gratification while affirming ” Nosferatu” as a generational work.

Since the early days of filmmaking, “Nosferatu” has been a sociological code. There was Murnau’s film: the ground-breaking performance made of unauthorized artistic property. It was a renegade masterpiece that would start conversations about the importance of passion until the end of time, while exploring burgeoning ideas about something else that still have value today. Herzog’s take was the romantic’s ideal, a tale of life and death in a world riven by paranoia and the constant threat of global war, turning its vampire antagonist into a tragic figure imploring viewers to understand that eternal life is a curse , one should never wish for. to endure. Now there’s Eggers’ film: the rendering of aesthetics that cares about how the past works blurs into the present. He decries a ruthless, pleasure-hungry society and wonders if there can be piety without the loss of desire and sexual satisfaction, questioning whether the cultural paradigm was gone before we ever knew it was lost. His “Nosferatu” correctly leaves that question unanswered, allowing the door to be ajar for the next person to offer their solution. In the absence of a single, broad truth, fear remains. Feeling terrified has never been so exquisite.

“Nosferatu” hits theaters on Christmas Day, December 25.