Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers forNosferatu.Robert Eggersmay have won genre fans over with his masterful directorial turns inThe Witch,The Lighthouse,andThe Northman, but his latest horror outingNosferatuis his most immersive yet. The film is a re-imagining of the original 1922F.W. Murnauhorror classic, with Eggers' dedicated attention to detail producing an immersive, frightening experience anchored byBillSkarsgård’s incredible transformation into Count Orlok. It’s easily the best horror film of the year and will be regularly rewatched by any horror fan looking for a captivating fright fest. Alot happens in the movie, especially during its jaw-dropping ending, so here’s a rundown of all the chaos that Eggers unleashes.
What Is ‘Nosferatu’ About?
Following a similar story structure to the original, Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) is a sweet buteerily intuitive and anxious young woman, whosekind husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) is sent away by his boss Herr Knock (Simon McBurney)to secure a home in their town of Wisborg for reclusive Transylvanian Count Orlok(Skarsgård). Ellen fears Thomas' departure but sends him off with a locket of her hair. Ellen is left in the care of their friends Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Anna Harding (Emma Corrin), who have two young daughters and are expecting their third child.
Cut to Herr Knock, naked and laughing maniacally to the sky in an occult circle of candles about how Thomas is en route:it’s a trap. Thomas' long sojourn takes him through a village where he catches the locals in a vampire-killing ritual before his horse is stolen. Eventually arriving at the Count’s castle, Thomas is increasingly unwell and terrified, and Orlok won’t let him leave. The Count is obsessed with Ellen and the locket and pockets it. In the daylight,Thomas explores the castle to find Orlok in his sarcophagus and tries to kill the sleeping corpse-man, but is caught and pursued. Orlok is feasting on Thomas at night, but Thomas escapes out a window and into the sea, headed slowly home.
At home,Ellen is having restless dreams each night. Orlok, transporting across the sea towards Wisborg with his sarcophagus in the belly of a ship, speaks to Ellen from afar:“Soon I will no longer be a shadow to you. Soon our flesh shall embrace and we shall be as one.“As Orlok traverses the sea, Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson), who is tending to Ellen, brings in the alchemist and occultist Professor Albin Eberhard Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) to examine Ellen, discovering her connection to dark forces. Thomas arrives on horseback, gravely ill, as Orlok’s ship crashes ashore and releases a horde of plague-ridden rats. As the plague spreads rapidly,Orlok’s shadow literally glides across the city in a display of malevolent influence.Cut to Von Franz telling allies that they have to face the true evil they’re fighting: “the Vampyr Nosferatu.” Elsewhere, Orkok appears before Ellen. After an argument, Ellen rebukes Nosferatu, and he is maaaaad.He curses her; she has three nights to willingly submit to him or else he’ll take someone she loves each night.
What Kills Orlok at the End of ‘Nosferatu’?
Ellen wakes after the first night to her close friend, Anna, being attacked by plague rats. The next day, Anna is distressed andthe city is increasingly in shambles. Von Franz deduces that Nosferatu has to sleep through days in the dirt he was buried in, giving them a lead to find (and hopefully) destroy him. Soon after, Thomas expresses that he knows Nosferatu wants Ellen, andEllen tells Thomas the truth: in abject loneliness as a younger woman, she called out to the darkness.Orlok answered.He “took me as his lover” in the past, she says, and now “he has discovered our marriage and has come back.“Night two in Wisborg, and Nosferatu has come to finish off Anna and all of her children. Ellen, Thomas, Von Franz, and allies have a plan to find where Nosferatu sleeps and destroy him.
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Von Franz tells Ellen that he’sconvinced that Ellen’s self-sacrifice is the only way to destroy the beastand that he’ll keep Thomas occupied while she destroys the vampire. Von Franz, Sievers, and Thomas move on to find the Count’s sarcophagus (and 5,000 rats), but Nosferatu isn’t in the tomb. Thomas realizes it was all a ruse, and Von Franz is in on it, and Thomas rushes home. Meanwhile, in her and Thomas' bedroom, Nosferatu arrives to Ellen who is wearing a white gown. She recommits herself to him, and they once again have a Satanic sexual congress. Nosferatu is addicted to Ellen, however, and the entire plan is to distract him until the sun comes up (as shown in the Count’s grimoire).She dies from blood loss, and she cradles Nosferatu as the beast dies from the sun’s rays, breaking the curse.
‘Nosferatu’ Is a Battle Over Ellen’s Soul
Ellen makes for a unique protagonist, differentiatingNosferatuboth from prior iterations and from a wide array of horror films, as she has a role in both Orlok’s emergence and his destruction.Ellen had an ethereal nature that accidentally or subconsciously called Nosferatu from his long slumber in her moment of lonely despair. She pledged herself to him and they had Satanic sexual congress (as seen in the film’s beginning). Von Franz even suggests at one point that, in another era, Ellen might have been a priestess of Isis: she had a powerful nature even as a child, perhaps from another incarnation. Orlok recognizes her unique nature immediately. When Orlok appears before her prior to her cursing him away, she says “I felt you, crawling like a serpent in my body,” and he retorts, “It is not me, it is your nature.” She retorts that she loves Thomas, but Orlok says"Love is inferior to you, I told you, you are not of humankind.“Orlok sees a dark inhuman power within her, which is the source of his infatuation with Ellen.
Throughout the movie, Ellen is wrestling with her nature in a conflict between her internal darkness (represented by Nosferatu) and light (represented by Thomas). There’s power and darkness within her (which woke Nosferatu from his slumber), but she longs for goodness and peace. She’s much more complex than her past counterparts. The original sees Ellen (Greta Schröder) as a pure soul under Nosferatu’s spell, and her sacrifice is explicitly due to being “pure-hearted,” innocent by definition. In Werner Herzog’sNosferatu the Vampyre, Lucy Harker (Isabelle Adjani) is in a similar spot to Ellen in that she’s plagued by nightmarish visions of the titular monster. As her husband, Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz), is increasingly subject to Nosferatu’s growing whims, Lucy is much more of an activist, engaging the townspeople against the threat. Depp’s Ellen walks the line between the two, too twisted around Nosferatu’s being to wage public war, but not from a place of supposed purity.
In Robert Eggers’Nosferatu, Ellen’s sacrifice isn’t necessary because she’s purity incarnate; it’s because she unleashed the evil and needs to make amends.This Ellen is all of us; she has good and evil within her and is capable of succumbing to either. At one point she even asks if evil is intrinsic within some souls or if it’s external…she knows well that she fell for the ultimate Bad Boy in her past, and Thomas is her redemption before the past comes calling. It’s why her sacrifice is so tragic. Her darkness threatened to doom the world because of what it unleashed, so she has to sacrifice to make good and (as Von Franz makes clear) redeem her own soul.Nosferatuisn’t really about Orlok’s external threat, it’s about Ellen’s agency, taking command over her soul and legacy. Its ultimate lesson is that we can all expunge our own darkness, though the cost may be more than we bargained for.
Nosferatuis in theaters.
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