Passion projects are often lauded simply for their passion, for the sheer effort that it took to bring a dream to life. Sometimes, that celebration of energy expended can obfuscate the artistic merits of a film, as the blinkered vision of a dedicated auteur can be a film’s saving grace, or its death knell. This is one of the hazards of the passion project, which is satirically explored in the 2000 film “Shadow of the Vampire,” a fictionalized depiction of the making of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent horror film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” in which John Malkovich plays the filmmaker obsessed with “authentic” horror.

This meta approach is a clever twist on the iconic early horror movie that looms large in our cultural memory. Inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” (with names and details changed in order to skirt the 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 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 colonial horror film “The Witch,” the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired two-hander “The Lighthouse,” and a Viking epic “The Northman,” delivers his ultimate passion project: a direct remake of Murnau’s film.

His first non-original screenplay, 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” is a playful spin, Eggers’ “Nosferatu” is an utterly straight-faced and interminably dull retread of the 1922 film. It’s the exact same movie, just with more explicit violence and sex. And while Eggers loves to pay tribute to the style and form of cinema history in his work, the sexual politics of his “Nosferatu” feel at least 100 years old.

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.

Nicole Kidman stars as Romy Mathis, the chief executive of Tensile, a robotics business that pioneered automotive warehouses. In the movie’s opening credits, a maze of conveyor belts and bots shuttle boxes this way and that without a human in sight.

Romy, too, is a little robotic. She intensely presides over the company. Her eyes are glued to her phone. She gets Botox injections, practices corporate-speak presentations (“Look up, smile and never show your weakness”) and maintains a floor-through New York apartment, along with a mansion in the suburbs that she shares with her theater-director husband ( Antonio Banderas ) and two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly).

But the veneer of control is only that in “Babygirl,” a sometimes campy, frequently entertaining modern update to the erotically charged movies of the 1990s, like “Basic Instinct” and “9 ½ Weeks.” Reijn, the Danish director of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” has critically made her film from a more female point of view, resulting in ever-shifting gender and power dynamics that make “Babygirl” seldom predictable — even if the film is never quite as daring as it seems to thinks it is.

The opening moments of “Babygirl,” which A24 releases Wednesday, are of Kidman in close-up and apparent climax. But moments after she and her husband finish and say “I love you,” she retreats down the hall to writhe on the floor while watching cheap, transgressive internet pornography. The breathy soundtrack, by the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, heaves and puffs along with the film’s main character.

One day while walking into the office, Romy is taken by a scene on the street. A violent dog gets loose but a young man, with remarkable calmness, calls to the dog and settles it. She seems infatuated. The young man turns out to be Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of the interns just starting at Tensile. When they meet inside the building, his manner with her is disarmingly frank. Samuel arranges for a brief meeting with Romy, during which he tells her, point blank, “I think you like to be told what to do.” She doesn’t disagree.

Some of the same dynamic seen on the sidewalk, of animalistic urges and submission to them, ensues between Samuel and Romy. A great deal of the pleasure in “Babygirl” comes in watching Kidman, who so indelibly depicted uncompromised female desire in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” again wade into the mysteries of sexual hunger.

“Babygirl,” which Reijn also wrote, is sometimes a bit much. (In one scene, Samuel feeds Romy saucers of milk while George Michael’s “Father Figure” blares.) But its two lead actors are never anything but completely magnetic. Kidman deftly portrays Romy as a woman falling helplessly into an affair; she both knows what she’s doing and doesn’t.

Dickinson exudes a disarming intensity; his chemistry with Kidman, despite their quickly forgotten age gap, is visceral. As their affair evolves, Samuel’s sense of control expands and he begins to threaten a call to HR. That he could destroy her doesn’t necessarily make Romy any less interested in seeing him, though there are some delicious post-#MeToo ironies in their clandestine CEO-intern relationship. Also in the mix is Romy’s executive assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde, also very good), who’s eager for her own promotion.

Where “Babygirl” heads from here, I won’t say. But the movie is less interested in workplace politics than it is in acknowledging authentic desires, even if they’re a little ludicrous. There’s genuine tenderness in their meetings, no matter the games that are played. Late in the film, Samuel describes it as “two children playing.”

As a kind of erotic parable of control, “Babygirl” is also, either fittingly or ironically, shot in the very New York headquarters of its distributor, A24. For a studio that’s sometimes been accused of having a “house style,” here’s a movie that goes one step further by literally moving in.

What about that automation stuff earlier? Well, our collective submission to digital overloads might have been a compelling jumping-off point for the film, but along the way, not every thread gets unraveled in the easily distracted “Babygirl.” Saucers of milk will do that.

“Babygirl,” an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong sexual content, nudity and language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.