{"id":2386818,"date":"2025-01-06T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nosferatu-remake-falls-flat-by-failing-to-live-up-to-the-original\/"},"modified":"2025-01-06T09:03:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T14:03:40","slug":"nosferatu-remake-falls-flat-by-failing-to-live-up-to-the-original","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nosferatu-remake-falls-flat-by-failing-to-live-up-to-the-original\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Nosferatu&#8217; Remake Falls Flat By Failing To Live Up To The Original"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnosferatu-remake-falls-flat-by-failing-to-live-up-to-the-original%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2386818&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ray-epps-charged-with-misdemeanor-over-j6-capitol-protest\/\" title=\"Ray Epps faces misdemeanor charges for his involvement in the J6 Capitol protest.\">provided text appears<\/a> to be a critique of the recent film &#8220;Nosferatu&#8221; directed by Robert Eggers, which is a remake of the classic silent film. \u200bThe critique highlights several key aspects:<\/p>\n<p>1. **Originality Concerns**:\u2063 The reviewer\u200b argues that \u2064Eggers fails to achieve originality with &#8220;Nosferatu,&#8221; as remakes inherently lack \u2064the \u200ccreative freshness required to \u2064be considered original. They compare it unfavorably \u200bto the original\u2062 1922 film by F.W.Murnau and \u200ca later version by Werner Herzog, indicating that\u200b Eggers&#8217;s version\u200d does \u2063not surpass \u2064thes predecessors.<\/p>\n<p>2. **Cast Performance**: The\u200b acting is noted as one of the \u2063strengths of the film, \u200bwith Nicholas Hoult,\u2062 Lily-Rose Depp, and Willem Dafoe\u200d praised for their performances.The\u200c characters \u2062they portray\u2014Hutter, his wife, and Professor von Franz\u2014are discussed as compelling and well-delivered, helping immerse the \u200caudience in the story.<\/p>\n<p>3. **Cinematography**: The cinematography is described as beautiful, with specific shots enhancing the \u2063film&#8217;s atmospheric setting, particularly\u200d those\u2064 that establish\u2062 the time and place. However, there is criticism of how the camera\u2064 movements \u200care employed, suggesting that they sometimes feel forced rather \u200bthan organically fitting the story.<\/p>\n<p>4. **The Character of Count Orlok**: Bill \u2064Skarsg\u00e5rd\u2019s portrayal of Count Orlok is noted,with the \u2062design choice to keep him mostly\u2064 obscured\u200b and shadowy. \u200bThis is \u2064interpreted \u2063as an effective way \u200cto\u200c create a \u2064sense\u2064 of \u2064horror, contributing to the film&#8217;s dark ambiance.<\/p>\n<p>5. **Overall Execution**: Despite the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gil-gutknecht-hydrocarbon-fuels-we-dont-need-no-stinking-hydrocarbon-fuels\/\" title=\"Gil Gutknecht: Hydrocarbon Fuels? We Don\u2019t Need no Stinking Hydrocarbon Fuels!\">good elements<\/a>, the critique indicates that Eggers&#8217;s direction\u2064 sometimes overreaches. This is seen in his use of \u2064camera work and visual storytelling, which may \u2063come across as excessive or\u200d unnecessary, detracting from\u2063 the film&#8217;s narrative impact.<\/p>\n<p>while &#8220;Nosferatu&#8221; features strong performances and attractive cinematography, the critique suggests that Eggers struggles with originality and direction, resulting in a \u200cfilm that, even though not a failure, does not quite reach the heights of \u200dit&#8217;s iconic predecessors.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Hemingway <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/change-your-mind\/hemingways-tips-on-toughness-focus-and-creativity-c86e1230719d#:~:text=Don't%20overwork%20or%20you,back%20up%20the%20next%20day.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a> a writer must either be original or do what someone else has already done but do it better, advice that can be extended to all artists. In his latest movie, &ldquo;Nosferatu,&rdquo; director Robert Eggers does neither.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Originality is immediately out the window since no one can be original when remaking a movie. The problem is compounded in this case because the original &ldquo;Nosferatu&rdquo; was itself a cinematic bootleg of Bram Stoker&rsquo;s <em>Dracula<\/em> with a few names and settings changed to avoid a lawsuit (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.plagiarismtoday.com\/2011\/10\/17\/dracula-vs-nosferatu-a-true-copyright-horror-story\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the plan didn&rsquo;t work<\/a>.) Anyone who has seen any halfway-decent adaptations of <em>Dracula<\/em> will immediately know and recognize the major beats in this movie. And, try as he might, Eggers cannot top what F. W. Murnau and Werner Herzog did in 1922 and 1979, respectively. To be clear, Eggers&rsquo; take is not a total washout; there are good elements in this movie. But the sum is not greater than the parts.<\/p>\n<p>The cast is one of those good elements. Nicholas Hoult as Thomas Hutter, Lily-Rose Depp (Captain Jack Sparrow&rsquo;s own daughter) as his wife, and Willem Dafoe as Professor von Franz are particularly superb. Hoult&rsquo;s Hutter is the normal, everyday, practical man who finds himself trapped in a nightmare; Depp is the woman who is cursed to be part of the supernatural world; and Dafoe is the eccentric, half-mad scholar, fired from the university for his obsession with alchemy and the occult. These three do an especially fine job of disappearing into their roles, selling us these characters, and helping the audience to lose themselves in the story.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The cinematography and setting also help with this task. Several shots scattered throughout the film&rsquo;s two-hour and 12-minute runtime &mdash; the house at night at the movie&rsquo;s start; Hutter standing at the crossroads in the forest, waiting for the vampire&rsquo;s coach to take him to its castle; the castle itself in the distance, the coach trundling toward it, and wolves running alongside it &mdash; are especially beautiful. These, like the performances, help put us in the world of 1838 Germany. The camera following Hutter walking toward the real-estate firm where he works, pushing his way through a thick syrup of humanity, all moving, all working, is a visually superb way of telling us Wisborg is a modern city, brimming with life.<\/p>\n<p>The same elements flip the switch from the normal to the horrific. Eggers made a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/god-loves-me-10-year-old-trans-child-quotes-bible-to-tell-tx-legislators-why-they-shouldnt-ban-trans-surgeries-procedures-for-minors\/\" title=\"\u2018God Loves Me\u2019: 10-Year-Old Trans Child Quotes Bible To Tell TX Legislators Why They Shouldn\u2019t Ban Trans Surgeries, Procedures For Minors\">good choice<\/a> when he decided that the vampire, Bill Skarsgard&rsquo;s Count Orlok, was not to be clearly seen. For most of the film, he is out of camera focus or covered in shadows, a hulking mass of darkness blotting out the night with only his hands or eyes clearly visible. Orlok is the nightmare, the appetite that can only feed and must feed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>These good elements fall apart, however, because Eggers tries too hard. Take the camera work. Beautiful cinematography is a mark of a great film. Sometimes this means the camera will generally stay still, allowing the audience to take in the vastness of the world around them. John Ford was the master of this kind of visual storytelling; just watch &ldquo;The Searchers&rdquo; again. Other times, it will mean moving the camera as Orson Welles did in &ldquo;Citizen Kane&rdquo; and &ldquo;Touch of Evil.&rdquo; A good director will not force the camera but allow the story to dictate what the camera does. <\/p>\n<p>In the new &ldquo;Nosferatu,&rdquo; one gets the distinct impression that Eggers is going through the same bag of tricks either because he felt his reputation as the director of &ldquo;The Witch&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Northman&rdquo; demanded it or because he was afraid that without the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/15-hilarious-memes-from-the-first-presidential-debate\/\" title=\"15 Hilarious Memes From The First Presidential Debate\">fancy camera work<\/a>, audiences would grow bored. <\/p>\n<p>A prime example of this comes when Hutter is in the vampire&rsquo;s castle. Orlok has taken out a piece of paperwork, written in the extinct Dacian language (which he also speaks as his native tongue), and demands Hutter sign it, lying that it is an additional, small legality in the process of his purchasing a house in Wisborg. The camera looks up, bringing us to Hutter&rsquo;s fear-stricken face, and then pans down so we see the paperwork at eye level, its top edge extending out into the distance of the table. A neat visual, but what is the point? What part of the story is being visualized through this movement?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Orlok is another glaring indicator of this problem. Skarsgard is trying his damndest, but his noble effort does not pay off. His Orlok is big, taller than any other character even with his hunched shoulders, with a hard, booming voice and <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">vacuum cleaner-loud breathing<\/a> that might represent age or sickness (it is hard to know). It is plain what Eggers was trying to convey. But the big, scary villain is just as cliched as the soft-spoken villain. <\/p>\n<p>Compare this with Klaus Kinski&rsquo;s 1979 performance, which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jweLDWGtRXs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">oozes not just menace but <em>wrongness<\/em><\/a>  in the way he talks and moves and looks at the living. Kinski was aided by his makeup, which, like Max Schreck in the original, makes him a deformed monstrosity, with corpse-white skin, rat teeth, long fingers reminiscent of a bat, and pointed ears. Makeup and performances combined to make Orlok not just a vampire but the incarnation of disease and rot.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1922 original, this is brilliantly displayed by showing Orlok surrounded by rats in his coffin. But not only does Skarsgard not have this creep factor, he does not have the horrific, rodent-predator features of his predecessors. Eggers again tries too hard to make his vampire true to actual vampire legends (his Nosferatu is literally a rotting corpse) with the result that Skarsgard is big and loud and unpleasant but not scary.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>These deficiencies might not have been as big of a stumbling block if there were a cohesive narrative running throughout Eggers&rsquo; remake. Several thematic possibilities are hinted at &mdash; the conflict between couples, especially in their roles as providers and nurturers; enlightenment and science versus superstition and tradition; esotericism as opposed to practicality; and desire and control &mdash; which leads to what should have been the main theme: &ldquo;Does evil come from within us or from outside us?&rdquo; the question Depp&rsquo;s character, Ellen, asks Professor von Franz. <\/p>\n<p>But nothing long-term is done with these ideas. They come onto the stage (usually through dialogue) and then exit. This is not to say a movie must have only one theme; a good screenwriter and talented director can layer themes together. But, all things being normal, there must be a theme, especially in horror movies, which often function as contemporary Greek tragedies (1941&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Wolf Man&rdquo;) or morality tales (2014&rsquo;s &ldquo;It Follows&rdquo; and 1999&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Blair Witch Project.&rdquo;) Without a theme, you have &ldquo;Friday the 13th&rdquo; &mdash; fun, slasher schlock but nothing beyond that. <\/p>\n<p>Once again, you are left with the distinct impression that Eggers bit off more than he could chew, threw in multiple possible themes, and then did not know or care how to sew them together. This hurts the film, not so much because audiences need to be told what to think via a 2&times;4 theme, but because they need to know how to feel. A theme channels a story and its characters. A theme of self-sacrificial love will strike the right emotional chord when the hero sacrifices himself at the climax, for instance. Because there is no real theme in &ldquo;Nosferatu,&rdquo; the characters are left to flounder and leave no lasting impression despite the great work that many of the actors and actresses give.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Nosferatu&rdquo; is undoubtedly one of the better movies to have come out in 2024. But when the cinematic equivalent of a lava lamp receives that much praise, it is a sign of how dire things are in Hollywood.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Nathan Stone is a storyteller who looks at culture, politics, and religion from a different POV on his YouTube channel Nate on the Stone, and who exercises the moral imagination in his writing. A lover of books, music and the outdoors (especially with dogs) he earned a masters in American history from Liberty University in 2016. Subscribe to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCAf9yqD5ewDue7gE8NDUmqg?view_as=subscriber\">his channel<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nes_nathan\">follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hemingway advised that writers must be original or improve upon others&#8217; work; Eggers&#8217; &#8220;Nosferatu&#8221; achieves neither<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1686,"featured_media":2386819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/nosferatu.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[36241,4865,47981,11605],"class_list":["post-2386818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-film-review","tag-horror","tag-nosferatu","tag-remake"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/nosferatu.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2386818"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2386822,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386818\/revisions\/2386822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2386819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2386818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2386818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2386818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}