🎥🍿🎬 ONTD Film Society: Nosferatu (2024) Review
Have you seen clips/read reviews of “Nosferatu” and are on the fence about seeing it? Are you concerned about raunchy sex scenes, being appropriate to see with adult children/parents, or possibly animal cruelty? Never fear; The ONTD Film Society* is here to help! While I’m going to try to keep things as vague and relatively spoiler free as possible, please be advised that there will more than likely be spoilers in the comments, so step cautiously.
*The ONTD Film Society is in honor of our own @scriptedending, who is our Patron Saint of Indies and all things Cinema.
Synopsis:
In the winter of 1838, Ellen Hutter lives in the town of Wisborg, Germany, with her husband, Thomas, an estate agent. Hoping to achieve financial security, Thomas accepts a commission from his employer, Herr Knock, to sell Schloss Grünewald, a decrepit stately home in Wisborg, to the reclusive and eccentric Count Orlok. Orlok of course is the dreaded Nosferatu, and as you can guess, nothing good will come from this.
Who’s in it?
Eggers really stacked this film talent-wise with Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok/Nosferatu, Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp as hapless couple Thomas and Ellen Hutter, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who is hot as hell in this) and Emma Conrin as the best friend Friedrich Harding and his wife Anna, and Willem Dafoe as Von Franz (a character based on Von Helsing).
A nice surprise is Lily-Rose, who does a lot of physical acting in this role and treads that fine line between being demure and super creepy convincingly.
So demure...so mindful.
She looks really good in period clothing. She is much better in this than the first (and only) episode of “The Idol” I saw, and I look forward to seeing her in more things.
Bill Skarsgård is also great as Count Olaf. A lot of his scenes are shot at either the castle or on a ship, and Eggers takes full advantage of lighting/shadows/cropping to keep him seen, but at the same time unseen.
Quite a few scene show either only his eyes closely cropped, or the side of his head. You never fully see what he looks like until the end of the film, and while some folks had issues with his final form I did not.
I'm sexy and I know it!
Themes:
The cinematography in this film is absolutely gorgeous, and the attention to period details like clothing, hairstyles, etc is top notch. Eggers uses a lot of 19th century Romanticism references in the color palette and overall look of the film. The earlier scenes in Wisborg are very bright and Victorian colored with lots of pink, light blues, and warm, natural colors.
In contrast, all of the scenes with Orlok's castle in Transylvania's Carpathian Mountains are very dark, with hues of dark blues and greys, with a few pops of gold from candlelight.
Later in the film as Orlok’s influence in the town of Wisborg becomes more apparent, the color scheme shifts from the formerly cheerful Victorian colors to the darker hues that were used for his castle.
Of Interest to Women:
Eggers really paid attention to every detail in this film, and one of the things that interested me was how women’s health issues were treated. The Ellen character struggles with bouts of sleep-walking and seizures, but Victorian Age doctors often wrote off any type of mental issues in women at that time as "hysteria," which was basically code for "we have no idea what your problem is, but we think it’s your nerves getting signals from your vagina and uterus, so let me try whack ass things to cure it."
No worries, dear woman...it's all in your vajayjay!
Basically, any women’s health issue that made men uncomfortable was written off as hysteria, and the whack ass “cures” included making you breathe ether to calm you down (something that actually happens in the film), forced bed rest, and "pelvic massage" where they stimulate the poor woman until she orgasms, because apparently a good orgasm somehow cleared the head? Weird stuff. Bloodletting, i.e. bleeding patients of their "bad blood" was also popular and menstrual blood was considered particularly bad; there a scene where Von Franz is examining Ellen and mentions that she has a heavy period flow and has to be bled to “get the bad blood out” so he punctures her arm and seriously, what the hell is that supposed to do?
What about the sex? Can I comfortably watch this with my teen/adult children/parents?
This film is rated ANFSH, or "Absolutely No Fucking Shown Here."
I don’t know what earlier reviewers of this movie was banging on about horniness and moans of pleasure because I saw none of that. There’s a scene in the beginning where Ellen is moaning and humping the air while in a forest but it reads more “possession” than “getting railed by Ghost Daddy.” Count Olaf sleeps in the nude and while there's a scene where while you can obviously see dick half of it is in shadow so you don't see details like veining, etc. so while you see dick you actually don't see DICK. There is a love scene in the middle of the film between Ellen and Thomas but it's done Victorian style where they're fully dressed and she unzips his pants while his back is to the camera and you basically see a bunch of frantic humping and heavy breathing. Towards the end you get a shot of Lily's breasts but as it's a "seduction" of sorts it's all very natural looking and the way Eggers shot it it reads more "look at me lying here elegantly topless" than "look at my tatas!" IMO it's very well done and non-offensive; Eggers kept in mind that these were Victorian times, and everything is done with restraint. There’s also a scene where someone commits necrophilia but it’s so cleverly done I had no idea it was even happening until some more eagle-eyed ONTDers pointed it out to me later. My opinion is that there is nothing in this film that would warrant a parental side-eye, but your mileage may vary.
How were the animals treated? Was there animal cruelty?
It looks like the animals all had a great time, and were treated well. There’s a scene where Orlok’s coffin is opened with him sleeping inside and there are three rats playing a game of tag near his head, which is LOL. In later Wisborg scenes there’s shots where rats are gathered about in more areas than others, clearly showing some sort of food involvement.
During a later scene in the crypt the rats are clearly trained to run when they see bright lights, so you get great imagery of the rats “fleeing” when Von Franz waves his torch about. Great stuff.
There’s also a scene with a pigeon. You can tell clear as day that something bad is about to happen when you see that batshit Renfield putting its head near his mouth.
You better not hurt Pidgey!
There’s a quick cutscene, and then the pigeon is headless and spurting blood while the Renfield is chewing, so even though it looks realistic you can tell the pigeon got switched out. No animals were harmed during this film.
Fun Facts:
- Filming took place primarily at Barrandov Studios in Prague, Czech Republic between February and May 2023.
- Corvin Castle, located in Transylvania, is used for the exterior shots of Orlok Castle in the film.
To play Count Orlok, Skarsgård lost a significant amount of weight and worked with the Icelandic opera singer Ásgerður Júníusdóttir to lower his vocal range and character, and spent up to six hours a day having prosthetic makeup applied.
- The film makes use of several custom-made props, some of which were kept by the actors after filming. Robert Eggers gifted Lily-Rose Depp the prop of Ellen's locket, and Nicholas Hoult kept and framed Orlok's fake penis worn by Bill Skarsgård in the film.
- The fear on Nicholas Hoult's face in the scene where his character is being chased by wolves was entirely real. Even with the handlers those wolves were hella wild, and he did not feel comfortable filming with them.
Have you seen the film yet and just want to discuss it? Come on in, the water’s fine!
Source:
x My eyes at the cinema
x Wikipedia
x Screencaps from the official film trailers