What is Nosferatu by Robbert Eggers worth?

It is the most cult image: his hunchbacked shadow, his hooked nose and his curved fingers which stand out against a white wall. The masterpiece of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnauwhich still raises eyebrows more than a hundred years after its release, notably participated in promoting one of the most interesting movements in cinema: German expressionism, which we notice thanks to its abstract settings and its beauty romantic. Since then, Nosferatu has been developed, under the gaze of other filmmakers. Werner Herzog for example who, in 1979, chose Klaus Kinski to take on the role of the terrible monster, in a sublime rewriting of the 1922 film. His interpretation thus crystallizes the apogee of the new German cinema, this movement of the 1970s born away from the big studios and largely influenced by the French New Wave . But our favorite, in the historiography of vampire films, goes straight for the Dracula of Francis Ford Coppola (1992), which lends its bloodthirsty creature an ancestral love story, in order to color the story of an erotic melodrama as kitsch as it is delicious. In front of the American filmmaker’s camera, the monster becomes a shameless seducer, in the guise of Gary Oldmanfacing which the young Mina Murray, played by Winona Rydercannot resist. The opportunity to place eroticism, until now the underlying theme of the tale of Dracula, at the heart of the narrative. This is perhaps the most blatant relationship between the film of Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Witch), which, with its own Nosferatu, creates an ambivalent fable about female desire. What did we think?

The Exorcism of Lily-Rose Depp

If you still doubted the acting talents of Lily-Rose Depp, Nosferatuyet another rewriting of the most cult of vampire stories, will convince you. Sometimes sobbing, sometimes threatening, she offers, in the role of young Ellen Hutter haunted by an ageless demon, a score worthy of the greatest mistresses of the horror genre. To be completely honest, we knew that from the first five minutes of the American series The Idol (2023), where she played the title role; that of an enigmatic and tormented pop star, under the yoke of the guru played by the singer The Weeknd. In Nosferatuit becomes even more disturbing, in a film which borrows almost more from the Exorcist of William Friedkin (1973) than previous versions of the vampire story. The Ellen Hutter played by Lily-Rose Depp appears there as a desperate young woman, possessed by a bloodthirsty demon – and much more. Because this is one of the big choices of this new adaptation, directed by Robert Eggers : the place given to the desire of his female character, alienated by a diabolical beast.

Just like Francis Ford Coppola before him, Robert Eggers chooses to depict, in all the mythologies developed by the story of Bram Stokerits erotic charge and its bestiality. Thus, the film opens with a lament: that of a Lily-Rose Depp distressed, drowned in her own solitude, in desperate search of a companion – a “guardian angel” she whispers between two sobs. The answer to his prayers will be terrible, as it will take the form of a sleeping vampire from the distant, snowy lands of Transylvania. Inhabited by this hideous prince of darkness (the incredible Bill Skårsgardnow accustomed to monstrous roles), she deploys a game full of nuances, sometimes filled with occult spasms, sometimes haunted by an evil look, when her mind finds itself completely bewitched by her terrible hunter. An icon is born.