It is within the eerie prologue that Robert Eggers hints at what could have been his most valuable contributions to the much-frequented material. I say could, because establishing Ellen as the protagonist from the start, emphasising sexual repression as a central theme, and giving an even more explicit form to the idea of vampires as carriers of fatal diseases are intriguing premises which do remain somewhat unexplored. Not entirely devoid of other notable intuitions and flashes of striking imagery, Eggers’s Nosferatu ultimately comes across as an over-produced bore lacking the artistic emancipation of his earlier works. The nicely orchestrated narrative flow those possessed, here feels broadly stiffened by repeated visual and sound solutions, and often upstaged by contrived—at times inelegant—camerawork. Contrary to what Eggers stated in various interviews, my immediate impression was that the film’s photography attempted to use an analog camera as if it were digital, rather than embracing its intrinsic characteristics.
However inappropriate, it is difficult to elude comparison with Murnau’s original enactment or Werner Herzog’s Sturm und Drang reincarnation. Of the latter particularly, Eggers’s seems as an almost pedestrian revisitation deprived of mood and humanity, and dulled by mainstream sensitivity. If there’s a veiled irony about Hutter becoming increasingly worried about meeting Count Orlok over the decades—he was euphoric in the twenties, wary in the seventies, and so anxious in the latest Nosferatu that I wonder whether in the next adaptation he will finally have the good sense to cancel the trip—the Count himself goes through an even more significant evolution. Compared to Max Schreck’s relatively sober portrayal and Kinski’s unearthlier presence, Eggers externalises the lonely nobleman’s torments into a far more explicit form of monstrosity, seemingly reflecting the struggle of the modern audiences to use their imagination and the emphasis on appearance that is so idiosyncratic of our times. Just speculative reflections, or maybe not.
Regardless, this emphysemic Nosferatu and his copiously drooling adepts will hardly be redeemed by the production’s superb artistry, the many finely written and performed pages, or the palpable passion for the subject that permeates every single frame. So, for now, while I genuinely hope that a second round will make me reconsider these notes, I shall pretend that this and The Northman never happened, and look forward to Eggers’s next, his third after The Witch and The Lighthouse.

I am not old enough to have met a Viking in person so I don’t know how they really looked like, though out of the many fantasies our perverted imagination produced about them, one above all I like to think true—that they could actually grab a spear in flight, turn it with one hand, and throw it back. Robert Eggers’s muscular epic distils in two hours of cold and grunts and fire, centuries of literature, legends, iconography of one of the most attractive populations in history, and one that recursively inspired legions of artists of any sort. But where the aesthetics gloriously succeed, everything else limps and eventually stumbles, making The Northman land not far enough from an empty Lion King with vain Shakespearean ambitions, and confirming that Eggers’s narrative skills are not yet as developed as his visual instincts. ‘A good revenge movie always works. Even if you don’t personally believe in the idea of vengeance, you know it’ll be fun to watch.’¹ True that, yet to me the potential of both the material and the author deserved a lot more than the fun-to-watch element.
While the ethereal presence of Anya Taylor-Joy, the beardy animality of Ethan Hawke, and Alexander Skarsgård’s physical and dramatic intensity are to be regarded among the heights of the film, I found Nicole Kidman miscast, her performance off, and her character in itself poorly written. As a similarly missed opportunity, it is a brilliant intuition that Amleth should eventually discover to have sought revenge for the wrong man, and therefore be torn between seeing King Aurvandil as a caring father, a ruthless ruler, or a brutish husband—but of this intriguing emotional complexity, there’s only a superficial hint that lasts the time of a couple of shots and disappears immediately after. Too bad, and yet for some reason I am already looking forward to his next.

1. Robert Eggers: ‘This is me trying to do Conan the Barbarian by way of Andrei Rublev’, Charles Bramesco (Little White Lies, 12 April 2022).