Although I watched this movie over two months ago in earth time and thirty five years ago in relative 2025 time (wildfires, hostile coup by technocratic oligarchs, Infinity Nikki), this review is going to be spoiler-free and light on…actual facts about the movie I talk about. Haha, sorry! You might still be entertained, because the context I watched this movie in will heavily feature in the review, and so it’s like a review of a thing that can only be experienced by this review! Have I invented a new kind of review? I am only one paragraph in!
Picture it, you’re at your boyfriend’s fathers very nice house in Northern California. The guest bathroom has Froid and Chaud on the faucet handles instead of hot and cold. Their kitchen has one of those faucets over the range for filling a giant pot of water like you’re Strega Nona up in this bitch. Pretty hoity fuckin toity, down to the last detail which is that they don’t have a TV anywhere, just jazz records and stacks of New Yorkers. So, we’re all bored. I can only go on so many hikes and secret trips to the Trader Joe’s to buy actual junk food that does not involve flax or fresh persimmon compote. Suffice to sat we had arrived at movie viewing evening, and we needed something highbrow, but exciting and new. Cultured, yet chaud. Like you, we heard that Nosferatu was pretty good and so twas decided. Myself, Garret, his Father and wife, and his sister all piled into the least comfortable movie viewing room I have ever known. There is a smol, only kind-of-comfy leather couch flanked by two hard backed chairs that Dad and wife always occupy so that the couch can be for guests. So not only are you slippin’ around on a leather couch but also you’re sitting right next to people who think hard backed chairs are appropriate movie viewing chairs like some ascetic monks with a netflix account. The whole time you’re vaguely aware that they would be on the couch if not for you. Or would they?! Are they kinky FREAKS who like to sit far away from each other and watch Challengers? To make matters worse there is a poodle who cannot decide what the fuck is going on and will just stare at you with her too-smart eyes as you interrupt the movie to beg her just to sit on the couch with you. Chat, it’s a whole thing! But aaaaanyway, we each grabbed a sensible portion of heirloom popped corn and hunkered slightly down for some nice creepy scary movie times because the only other thing we could do is talk to each other. Family.
Now, I love a scary movie. I am rarely actually scared watching them as I am unable to be subsumed by any narrative that includes monsters or ghosts or any plot holes whatsoever. And slasher movies have gone out of style since the scream series which is weird since they are the scariest ones and also the probably the cheapest to make. It’s just like, a guy, and some blood and random people running and screaming? You don’t even really have to buy clothes for the girls in them! Why are we not making more slasher films? Maybe it’s because of woke. So I really enjoy horror as a genre and I was excited for Nosferatu because it’s a horror movie, right? Right? *Queen Amidala face*
An aside about Bill Skarsgaard: I met him once in Canada and he’s nice as almost every Swedish person I have ever known is, but on the evening I met him he was also very, very flirtatious. Swedes are flirty, and it’s really direct and can be disconcerting. You know when a dog goes right for your crotch and it’s not suuuper inappropriate because it’s a dog, but also, you’re in public? It was like that but more ominous, because he’s Bill Skarsgaard. So, a werewolf. Perfect casting!
So I like, get it. The conceit here is not to do a scary movie, but a slightly eerie movie about a super scary sexy guy. Like what if the grossest spookiest guy was actually…hot, actually? And thus we arrive at problem a) Gross Womanizing Anti Hero Story is played all the way out. I have watched it, read it, lived it, watched it again, for what seems like many lifetimes now and yeah. We just don’t have a new way to tell the story of a man who is not worth shit but inexplicably finds hot women drawn to him. Not, anyway, from Robbie Eggers, who’s innovation seems to be…black and white? Like, why am I watching Manhattan? At least that was a bit of a romp and it had Diane Keaton. I think if Diane Keaton were in this film she would be cast as a Crone who tells Nos he’s a real schmuck who needs a new psychoanalyst, and then they’d have a cup of coffee together. 10/10 Would watch.
The other problem is that this isn’t even a new take on actual Nosferatu. Unless you consider really fleshing out the lawfair of 1830’s estate management a new take. I cannot believe I watched Nicholas Hoult go on a business trip. Maybe that was the conceit: Instead of writing a character that is a new kind of grievously evil antihero that womanizes his way to his own demise, what if we don’t write anything at all and then put some gross stuff on a guy with abs? Listen, you had me at abs.
And look, one scene in we realized that this was going to be an uncomfortable watch, and not just because of the furniture. Ellen, our main lady, played by Lily Rose Depp, is writhing and orgasming spookily on screen the moment the film begins. So, buckle up, it’s one of those nights. I prepared myself for two hours of throat clearing at overtly sexual content whilst sitting amongst my soon-to-be in-laws.
Chat. We were asleep by act two. My boyfriend’s father had a glass of wine in his hand in that hard backed chair and was FULLY PASSED OUT. I gotta say, I hate this for Lily Rose Depp. You can imagine this girl has been through enough. Now here she is on the home theater, just graduated summa cum laude from what-if-acting-was-just-constantly-convulsing school and she is convulsing her socks off, and here I am yawning through my fourteenth hand of phone solitaire. Damn. And Bill Skarsgaard is …oookay at being Dracula. It’s just that there’s not a lot for him to do. Much of the relationship between he and Ellen is telepathic, and you can’t do abs telepathically. Moreover, you don’t know what the fuck is going on. The script, apparently, is just incredibly faithful to the original Nosferatu which was made in 1922. Um, sorry, but people’s brains didn’t even work in 1922. Do you maybe want to update the story for people who have had a telephone conversation or been in a car? No? Just make it soft porn? Okay. Here are your many awards.
I thought this movie was trash. I sincerely hope that isn’t going to ruin it for you if you did not think that, not here to yuck anyones yum. Far from it. In fact, if you liked it, you have my full permission to mansplain to me why this is better than any episode of Buffy the Vampire slayer.
