Passion projects often are lauded simply for their passion, for the sheer effort it takes to bring a dream to life. Sometimes, that celebration of energy can obfuscate the real artistic merits of a film, a director’s blinkered vision becoming a death knell.
In the 2000 movie “Shadow of the Vampire” (a fictionalized depiction of the making of the 1922 silent “Nosferatu”), John Malkovich plays Germany’s F.W. Murnau, obsessed with “authentic” horror. Even within the clever meta-ness of a millennial indie, though, “Shadow of the Vampire” managed to channel the undying appeal of the original movie, one that still looms large in our cultural memory. Inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” (with names and details changed in order to skirt Murnau’s lack of rights to the book), “Nosferatu” is a landmark example of German Expressionism, and Max Schreck’s performance as the vampire is one of the genre’s unforgettable villains.
“Nosferatu” has since inspired many filmmakers over a century: Werner Herzog made his own bleak and lonely version with Klaus Kinski in 1979; Francis Ford Coppola went directly to the source material for his lushly gothic “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” in 1992. Now, Robert Eggers, who gained auteur status with his 2015 colonial horror film “The Witch,” delivers a direct remake of Murnau’s film, apparently a project he’s been fantasizing about for decades.
Eggers’ version isn’t a “take” on “Nosferatu” so much as it is an overly faithful retelling, so indebted to its inspiration that it’s utterly hamstrung by its own reverence. If “Shadow of the Vampire” was a playful spin, Eggers’ “Nosferatu” is an utterly straight-faced and interminably dull retread of the 1922 original. It’s the exact same movie, just with more explicit violence and sex. And while Eggers loves to pay tribute to styles and forms of cinema history in his work, the sexual politics of his remake feel at least 100 years old.
At root, “Nosferatu” is a story about real estate and sexual obsession: A young newlywed, Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), is dispatched from his small German city to the Carpathian Mountains in order to execute the paperwork on the purchase of a rundown manor for a mysterious Count Orlok (an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård), a tall, pale wraith with a rumbling voice that sounds like a beehive.
Thomas has a generally bad time with the terrifying Orlok, while his young bride at home, the seemingly clairvoyant Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), is taken with terrifying nightmares and bouts of sleepwalking, consumed by psychic messages from the count, who has become smitten with her, even from a distance. He makes his way to his new home in a rat-infested ship, unleashing a plague; Ellen weighs whether she should sacrifice herself to the count in order to save the town, which consists of essentially two men besides her husband — a doctor (Ralph Ineson) and an occult-leaning scientist (Willem Dafoe).
There’s a moment in the first hour of “Nosferatu” where it seems like Eggers’ film is going to be something new, imbued with real-world anthropological folklore rather than the starker interpretation of Murnau. Thomas arrives in a Romanian village, where he encounters a group of jolly gypsies who laugh at him and warn him and whose blood rituals he witnesses in the night. It’s fascinating, fresh, culturally specific and a new entry point into this familiar tale. Orlok’s mustachioed visage could be seen as a nod to the real Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Stoker.
But Eggers abandons this tack and steers back toward leaden homage. The film is a feat of maximalist and moody production design and cinematography, but the tedious and overwrought script renders every character two-dimensional, despite the effortful acting and teary pronunciations.
Depp whimpers and writhes with aplomb, but her enthusiastically physical performance never reaches her eyes — unless they’re rolling back in her head. Regardless of their energetic ministrations, both she and Hoult are unconvincing. Dafoe, as well as Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin as family friends who take in Ellen, bring a winking campiness to the movie, breathing life into the proceedings, while Simon McBurney devilishly goes for broke as the count’s fixer. However, every actor seems to be in a different movie.
Despite the sex, nudity and declarations of desire, there’s no eroticism or sensuality here; despite the blood and guts, there’s nothing scary either. The film is a whole lot of style in search of a better story and, without any metaphor or subtext (nothing about immigrants or foreigners?), it’s a bore. Eggers’ overwrought “Nosferatu” is dead on arrival, drained of all life and choked to death on its own worship.
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
‘Nosferatu’
Rated: R, for bloody violent content, graphic nudity and some sexual content
Running time: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Playing: In wide release Wednesday, Dec. 25
