“Nosferatu” is not your typical vampire movie.
In fact, it is devoid of the conventional stereotypes, the naive little girl, the forbidden fruit and the big, bad wolf dressed in high school clothing.
It is not for the faint of heart, either, the squeamish kind who could faint at the sight of gore.
It is for gothic lovers. Horror lovers. Maybe even geared toward feminists as well.
From Lily Rose Depp’s powerful performance as an unhinged broken wife to and Bill Skarsgard’s Romanian take on a ghastly vampire on the prowl for her, these two actors take center stage beautifully.
Depp’s performance seems to swallow each actor whole with how wonderfully she portrays female hysteria. It is a sight worth seeing.
“Nosferatu” is a goth tale that throbs in anguish and tragedy, and it focuses upon Ellen Hutter, a married woman who is tormented with nightmares. Her dreams seem to worsen when her husband, soft but feeble, Thomas Hutter, travels to Transylvania in hopes to iron out a property lease with the count that abides there.
During his time away, Ellen’s condition becomes more pressing, her dreams suddenly taking force as Thomas becomes a puppet to the count at the castle (who is a monster fixated on blood).
As audiences come to realize, Count Orlok (or Nosferatu) happens to be the demon plaguing Ellen’s, dreams, mind and body, even when she was a little girl. His hold over Ellen is fueled immensely when Thomas gives away his marriage rights to the count. It is then Nosferatu makes way to claim his prize, to claim Ellen.
Beneath the black veil that hovers above the German city, or the mice that scamper upon any orifice they come across in this movie, it is the epitome of a dark, yet honest plot from movie director, Robert Eggers. It is a plot that largely depicts the repression of female autonomy and the desires that might become of that actualization.
It is sensual and yet shameful how Ellen unravels when face-to-face with her sexuality and physical wants. Her repression, instead leers at her, a monster that manifests into open pores, gnarly teeth and hands that reach across the stretches of time and into her mind. It begs to let him in, let herself in, whilst snapping her body nearly in half, watching her delicate frame fold under the weight of her suppression. The ecstasy of it is overwhelming; it is illicit. Though, it is all the hungry men in Ellen’s young life want to dispose of.
“Nosferatu” harbors heavily upon the patriarchal system in the early 19th century that bridges between control and utter dominance over the female psyche and autonomy. Ellen’s evergrowing sexual yearning is demonized and labeled as hysteria by the men around her, including her very own husband. It was the only way men could possibly explain emotions and feelings in women of that time, emotions such as lust and desire. If women wanted that, they had to be utterly… mad.
It seems as if the only person who wants Ellen to be wholly complicit in these devilish desires is Nosferatu himself, calling to Ellen under the guise of something hideous, something monstrous, something inhumane. She cannot accept him because he truly is a beast, ugly and warring, and yet he is hers. An apparition of the darkest emotions she deems insidious, her own eroticism.
There is no grander story than a woman running in terror from the emotions she must suppress in a male-oriented society. The more she suppresses, the more her wants take form. It sucks the very life from the people around her. It invokes a hollowing darkness that tip-toes around the city, from door-to-door, until it brings death to those who forced her to hide it to begin with. It is repulsive, and yet Ellen hungers to devour her own sexual consciousness, devouring Nosferatu, until he becomes one with her.
