I Watch Films: Nosferatu (2024)

 

Nosferatu (2024)

As a child Ellen seeks a friend as she’s lonely; she forms a psychic link with Nosferatu (Count Orlok). Grown up and married to Thomas Hutter in the German city of Wisburg she has nightmares. Sent by his boss, Herr Knock to sell an old house to the mysterious Count Orlok she begs him not to go. He does, heading into the Carpathian mountains where people tell him not to go to Orlok; he has either a vision or a strange experience seeing a vampire killed. He completes the sale but falls ill, finding bite marks on his body. Orlok insists on another contract, which this time sells him Ellen. Thomas discovers Orlok in a coffin in the daytime, flees, falls into the river where he’s rescued by nuns who warn him Orlok is a vampire.

Orlok sets sail on a ship. It arrives in Wisburg empty of crew, though full of plague rats. Ellen, left behind with Thomas’s friends, Friedrich and Anna (who is pregnant) and their two children, sleepwalks and is ill. The doctor, Sievers, calls for help from his eccentric mentor von Franz, who has been disbarred for occultism. Von Franz diagnoses a demonic influence, which others are dubious of. Herr Knock is institutionalised for killing a sheep and eating it raw; Sievers and Von Franz find evidence he’s been doing mystical rituals.

Thomas returns, is forced to admit that he gave Ellen away. Von Franz suggests that the vampire has to return to the earth it was buried in every say. Plague overruns the city. Orlok tells Ellen if she doesn’t give herself over to him in three days he will kill everyone she loves; Anna is attacked by plague-rats and Friedrich throws them out. Despite the efforts of Sievers and Thomas, von Franz won’t admit everything he knows and every attempt by Ellen to escape causes more havoc.

A remake of the silent film, that infringed on Dracula, which is now out of copyright allowing elements to be taken from the novel. It’s slightly opaque, the nature of Orlok and Ellen’s link, between Orlok and plague, between the contract and the agreements and Knock’s rituals. These don’t quite come into focus, neither the moral logic that the 19^th and early 20^th century versions might have expressed, nor the mechanistic, plot-driven elements of modern vampire films. And perhaps all the better for it, refusing to give answers, refusing to place blame. Orlok is a monster and if he’s one that Ellen summoned unknowingly, that’s the nature of monsters.

Watch This: Stylish vampire film with some real mystery and horror
Don’t Watch This: Gruesome monsters, horrible deaths
And Also: The 1970s German version Nosferatu The Vampyre