CAN. NOT. WAIT.
Opens Christmas Day 2024.
Here's the teaser trailer.
...Welp, I've seen it now. Almost embarrassed to admit how many times. Seven.
The first time, I was quite disappointed. The film felt so uneven. Weird pacing. The first half felt perfectly paced, while the back half felt terribly rushed. Could have been two films, in my opinion.
My second nit was Eggers' departure from authenticity. As I'd texted a friend inquiring whether he and his son might enjoy Nosferatu, I replied:
"Robert Eggers was a meticulous production designer from Massachusetts before he directed his [only] four movies, so he’s got a MAGICAL eye for aesthetics, tone, mood, atmosphere, vibe, color, lighting, wardrobe, set design, lenses, etc.
The guys at the theater last night said he found a way to film [and light] in the dark so that it’s clearly dark—yet see-able—so I’m eager….!!
For The Northman, he famously hired a Scandinavian horticulturalist from a local university there to plant time-specific grasses and trees so that when he filmed, it would be accurate. He delayed production for a full YEAR so the maturity would suffice.
His reputation revolves around accurate depictions. The Northman sets were made with axes, no electric tools allowed."
So imagine my disappointment when all the Germans in Nosferatu are American and English actors who speak with English accents! Ugh. Are there no meritorious actors we could have used from Germany?!?
My third grievance revolved around (A) Lily-Rose Depp who, as someone else put it before me, "Hammily turned her acting knob up to 11"; (B) Willem Dafoe, whose professor chews the scenery and projects like this were a Broadway play; and (3) Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who consistently feels out of his depth. I thought Bill Skarsgård was tremendous as Count Orlok, though it took me a while to come around to the gutteral groaning that connects nearly every sentence (sentences that are, by the way, so perfectly enunciated that this alone is spookily unsettling and pitch-perfect).
Despite all the above, there is something ominous, foreboding, otherworldly, and outright fantastical about the first half of the film—right up until Dafoe's entrance (notwithstanding Depp's performance, which is distracting throughout)—but that magic all but disappears thereafter.
In my humble opinion, the film degrades then, with Dafoe strutting and shouting like a rooster, Johnson "shattering" because he's so darn sleepy, Depp writhing and moaning and contorting scene after scene, and Skarsgård contractually obligated to say, "I will leave you three nights. TONIGHT was THE FIRST," as if he's some seven-year-old cutting corners on being grounded from his mac-and-cheese.
Now (having seen Nosferatu six more times), I've become way less critical and far more appreciative.
I'm still disappointed with pacing, inauthenticity, Depp, Dafoe, Johnson, and delighted with Skarsgård.
However, I'm more appreciative (and attuned) to Egger's aims, plus some Easter eggs I missed in the first go-around.
In the end, Nosferatu was a film I'd looked so forward to and for so long—that perhaps it was my unfairly-high expectations, not Eggers' execution, that created such a chasm between what could have been and what is.
Oh well, it's just a movie, and the next batch is here already, so it's off to the cinema I go!
See you at the shows. Save me a seat.
p.s. If interested, the script as well as info on the Solomonari.
