Nosferatu | Film Review

When Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) travels to Transylvania for a meeting with the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is plagued with horrifying visions.

I was so excited to see this film! Taking away my love and excitement for anything horror, I studied the original 1922 Nosferatu back in university and loved it, so I really wanted to see this new take on it.

It's not a surprise that I loved the film.

The first thing I made a note of after watching was the way the director used light and dark so effectively to tell this story. There's a lot of darkness in the trailers, and because it's a gothic horror you expect the darkness to play a huge part, and it does.

But the advantage of this is that the use of light is sparing, and is used to emphasise the most important parts of these scenes. It's clear that every single instance of light was thought about really carefully and it definitely paid off.

There are a lot of impressive things about this movie, one of which was the acting. Everyone did a great job with their roles, but I particularly have to shoutout Lily-Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgård.

Depp's physicality in this role was so daring and unique, and brought so much to the character. She created some amazing visuals and it made her sections of the film so interesting to watch.

And then Skarsgård was incredible as Count Orlok. He completely disappeared into the role so well that if you didn't know it was him, you'd have no idea. And while a lot of this is down to the incredible make-up and prosthetics, a lot of it is also down to the work he did to truly become this character. It's amazing.

I really would have liked to see Orlok more, especially when Hutter first gets to the castle and the character is still a mystery. I think him being kept a mystery from the audience made sense, but it still would have been nice to get a closer, longer look at him.

The obvious big difference between this version and the original is that we get dialogue here, while the original was a silent film. I really loved the way dialogue was used. The screenplay was brilliant, and as amazing as the visuals were, the dialogue took things to another level.

But the visuals also have to be mentioned - the cinematography, the locations, the scenery, it's really a beautiful film to watch even if the story was completely different.

Overall, while I can understand that a gothic horror won't be for everyone, it was definitely for me. I thought this was a great updated version of the original and a really fascinating watch.

8/10