By Chris Revelle | Film | January 13, 2025 |
When I heard that Robert Eggers was making Nosferatu, I was excited. Eggers has a great grasp of visuals, high drama, and mysterious tones. The person who conceived The Witch and The Lighthouse has a perspective I want to see applied to other genre experiences like the vampire story. Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula came to mind as a possibility. It’s a phantasmagoric, atmospheric, and operatic vampire vision with a lush, imaginative, maximalist aesthetic that evokes notes of camp, dreams, and fantasy. Vampire stories are well-trod territory, so it’s more fun to find new angles. The Nosferatu that was released presented a different vision altogether: moodier and full of dread, depression, and German expressionism. Though they could not possibly look or feel more different, the two movies share some similar aims in how they interpret their stories, and both commit so fully to their choices that they bring to mind this classic meme:
It was inevitable that these two films would have some similarity baked into their crusts. The original Nosferatu from 1922 was essentially a legally distinct spin on Dracula because Bram Stoker’s estate denied the production company the rights to adapt the novel. With Coppola’s Dracula following the general plot beats of the novel and Eggers’ Nosferatu closely mirroring the 1922 film, we see many of the same broad strokes in terms of plot and characters. The strongest points of similarity between the films revolve around how they recontextualize Mina/Ellen and her relationship with Dracula/Orlok to comment on how poorly women are treated in vampire stories, but therein lie their differences as well.
In Coppola’s Dracula, the titular vampire begins as Vlad the Impaler, whose wife Elizabeta commits suicide while he’s off fighting the Ottomans. When he returns to find her dead, he spectacularly renounces God and is cursed to be a vampire forevermore. Mina is a reincarnation of Elizabeta who recognizes Dracula as a long-lost love. While their relationship is portrayed as a corruption of Mina’s prim and proper innocence, it’s also depicted as a tragic love story that proves such love can endure death. By the end of the movie, Mina is fully on Dracula’s side but ultimately delivers his deathblow as an act of mercy. This film discards the predator/prey dynamic for a doomed beauty-and-beast love story, not far removed in tone or bombast from Phantom of the Opera.
In Nosferatu (2024), young Ellen psychically pledges herself to Orlok, initiating years of depression, anxiety, and fugues replete with sleepwalking and seizures that only abate when Thomas enters her life. However, dark dreams and voices return when Thomas is sent to Orlok’s castle, causing Ellen’s condition to deteriorate dramatically. While she occasionally falls under Orlok’s spell, she has no love for him and wishes for a happy life with Thomas. Ellen tries to warn others, but the men around her largely dismiss her as hysterical, with the notable exception of Van Franz, who counsels her on how to use her connection to Orlok against the vampire. Ellen ultimately sacrifices herself by psychically summoning Orlok to her bed and keeping him there until sunrise, destroying him at the cost of her own life. This film flips the predator/prey dynamic, transforming it into a self-sacrificial honey trap where the prey uses her vulnerability to eliminate the predator.
Both films have very strong, distinct vibes and aesthetics that transport the viewer to another world and reference bygone eras of filmmaking in their presentation. Both seek to give their female leads greater agency, moving beyond corrupted purity symbols, and provide emotionally rooted explanations for the relationships between the vampire and the maiden. They strive to give their women a point of view and complicate their roles beyond “vampire victims.” Both films view their male characters as ineffectual and suggest that only their female leads can end the madness. Both attempt to revise the misogyny of their source material and find new stories within old ones.
Whether either film succeeds in its goals is up for debate, but of the two, I would argue that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is more effective than Nosferatu (2024) for the simple reason that it introduces new ideas. Nosferatu is an exceedingly well-crafted recreation of the original film, with the significant changes being a more explicitly sexual tone and greater emphasis on Ellen’s point of view. That’s not a problem per se, but there aren’t many new angles or ideas added. Characters are expanded, and a few small subplots are added, but the events of the film unfold largely as they do in the original. Whatever criticisms may be leveled at Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it cannot be denied that it offers a distinct take on the story. It’s a hyper-saturated, romance-novel-inflected vision that goes way over the top and isn’t afraid to be silly, sappy, or campy. One’s mileage may vary, but it’s undeniably original. Coppola also created a series of memorable images, such as the puppet show-style battle with the Ottomans, Lucy’s lacy corpse rising from the grave, and Mina’s absinthe-fueled date with Dracula.
As similar as they can be, I prefer Coppola’s vision over Eggers’. Eggers crafted a fearlessly dark, unsettling, and restrained vision, but he adhered so closely to the original film that it doesn’t feel like he infused as much of his own voice as he could have. I didn’t expect him to deliver the same colorful, overstuffed insanity as Coppola, but Eggers could have found his own unique angle and committed just as fully to it.