Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror) [PG]

The bountifully rich Count Orlok wishes to purchase property in Bremen and young Hutter is sent to the Count’s castle in Transylvania to finalise everything. But upon his arrival he discovers that Count Orlok is a strange man excited by the sight of blood and soon feverish nightmare begins to grip him. After realising that Orlok is a nosferatu, a vampire, he escapes the castle and heads back to Bremen. But it may be too late as a strange plague has already begun to sweep across Europe and it soon becomes clear that Orlok has eyes for Hutter’s young and innocent wife. 

Based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is the original Dracula movie that spawned a lot of popular vampire myths as well as delivered some of cinema’s most incredibly creepy images, not to mention the inspiration behind Bela Lugosi’s eerie double-jointed finger movements in the 1931 classic. 

The bountifully rich Count Orlok wishes to purchase property in Bremen and young Hutter is sent to the Count’s castle in Transylvania to finalise everything. But upon his arrival he discovers that Count Orlok is a strange man excited by the sight of blood a

nd soon feverish nightmare begins to grip him. After realising that Orlok is Nosferatu, a vampire, he escapes the castle and heads back to Bremen. But it may be too late as a strange plague has already begun to sweep across Europe and it soon becomes clear that Orlok has eyes for Hutter’s young and innocent wife. 

It may be in grainy black and white, it may be a silent movie, but Nosferatu stands as a beautiful piece of German Expressionist cinema that still sends shivers down the spine even to this day! Aside from the characters’ names, little of the Stoker’s vampiric horror story is changed and, as I mentioned earlier, this movie gave birth to some of the most iconic scenes in cinema, hell clips from this flick were even featured in Queen’s music video for ‘Under Pressure’ with David Bowie! 

Count Orlok (i.e. Count Dracula) is just as creepy a character as he was back in 1922! Between his sharpened fangs, heightened eyebrows, deathly slow prowl, elongated shadows, and spindly fingers, there are just so many things about this guy that are frightening. Amongst cinema’s most iconic moments are Orlok slowly and vertically rising from a coffin, his slow walks around his castle casting eerie elongated shadows, and the slow creeping of his shadow over the bodies of his sleeping and unsuspecting victims. Seriously eerie stuff! 

What I really liked about this movie is how alike it was to the book. Just like Stoker’s original classic, the major plot points and exposition are conveyed through letters, book chapters, and newspaper articles rather than captions, and the black and white medium was never put to better use than depicting a story about the struggle between light and dark. The German Expressionist love of using greater light to cast greater shadows was used here to wondrous effect, really heightening the horror of the entire thing. 

Starring Max Schreck, Alexander Granach, Gustav van Wangenheim, Greta Schroder, Georg H. Schnell, Ruth Landschoff, John Gottowt, Gustav Botz, Max Nemetz, Albert Venohr, and Hardy von Francois, Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens is an important piece in cinematic history that many Dracula remakes and vampire flicks owe part of themselves to. Filled with suspense, romance, drama, and mystery, it’s a movie that always going to hold relevance, even if its silence is seen as outdated. It’s jagged editing, intriguing special effects, and captivating performances elevate into a realm that is beyond the reach of time’s deathly decay and for this I admire it. 

Nosferatu

Image credit: IMDb

In my review for Last Voyage of the Demeter, I stated that I do agree with the argument that major studios are overdoing it with reboots and remakes. I am still of this opinion – there are so many good stories out there that could be turned into compelling films that might actually do well. The Invisible Life of Adie Larue could be the new romantic drama to replace The Notebook, The Scholomance series could easily become something like a new Twilight or Divergent series. But the more good remakes that I watch, the more I am inclined to ease off. At the end of the day, people are choosing to retell these stories because they are timeless and have a special relationship with people.

It's funny that the last time I talked about this was a vampire movie, a retelling of Dracula nonetheless, and that I’m talking about it again now with my review of Nosferatu.

Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) has been haunted by nightmares since childhood. When her nightmares come back shortly before her husband leaves on a job that would secure him a promotion, it proves to be a dark omen indeed. Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) travels to meet with the esoteric Count Orlock to finalise the sale of a property in England. Thomas’ stay with the count lengthens as he mysteriously falls ill and begins to awake each day with strange bite marks on his body. Fearful for his life, Thomas manages to escape back to England and his wife, but it soon becomes apparent that their dealings with the sinister Count Orlock are far from over.

Based on the novel by Bram Stoker and a remake of the 1920’s classic Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens starring Max Schrek, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gorgeous American-Gothic horror film that breathes a new life into the classic tale.

Filmed with a cold colour palette, almost dark enough to be black and white, and favouring tantalising, lingering panoramic shots that stretch the nerves to their utmost extent in anticipation of a jump scare, the film is a return to supernatural horrors of the ‘20s and ‘30s where performances, camera techniques, and hand-crafted achievements in costume, set, and makeup design enthrall audiences. Whilst definitely adhering to the gothic-romance aesthetic, the film superbly mixes both modern and traditional folk horror, with culture clash and the differences in social evolutions of towns and countries proving to be the real villain. Afterall, what’s more terrifying than bringing an old horror from another country home with you?

Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes

The captivating performances of Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe and Bill Skarsgard ensure bums remain firmly planted in seats from reel one, with the story being just different enough from Dracula to keep you invested in the heroes’ goal to eradicate the monster. There is a romantic element to the tale and a unique relationship written in between Ellen and Orlock: a story of infatuation, loneliness, and the power of promise. Depp is graceful and gorgeous, almost ethereal when she’s not seizing or having blood gush from her eyes. And Skarsgard produces some good ol’ fashioned chills down the spine with his deep and painfully eloquent vocal work. But of course, the real stars are Sally Alcott and the incredible makeup department who so perfectly designed a modern monster from a different age. The makeup design for Orlock is incredible: scary enough to cause recoil, yet not completely masking the humanity underneath.

Nosferatu is a beautiful modern horror movie that feels like a classic and what’s most endearing about it is that the love for the story, the genre, and the medium can be seen and felt in every shot.

Director: Robert Eggers, 2025

Cast: Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, Bill Skarsgard, & Willem Dafoe

Last Voyage of the Demeter

Image credit: thathashtagshow.com

It’s a common argument and complaint right now that mainstream Hollywood and the big studios in general are plying audiences with too many reboots, and remakes, and piggyback films, etc. I agree with this; when you think of the wealth of original content that there is spanning human history why would you gamble in making another Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean? What percentage of literature is unfilmable, how much is horded by those who own the rights, and how much of it just scares the studio heads? This thought is in my head right now because I've just come back from seeing a very good film based on a tiny portion of Bram Stoker's, Dracula.

Last Voyage of the Demeter chronicles the journey of the most celebrated monster from Transylvania to England. The crew of the Demeter are a motley bunch, but staunch and hearty, bound for England with the promise of a nice bonus if they get there in record time. Their cargo is a bunch of crates. When a storm upturns one of the crates, a sickly woman is discovered and while the Doctor nurses her back to health, men start disappearing during the night watch. Fear and superstition runs rampant as glimpses of a strange creature are seen and one by one, the screw succumb to gruesome deaths.

The voyage of the Demeter in Stoker’s gothic classic is a very small portion of the book, nothing more a chapter and written as the captain’s log. The little substory certainly lends itself to cinematic interpretation and while it can be argued that Dracula movies have been done time and time again, this film manages to be original and a good example of all the tiny golden nuggets that are hidden in humanity’s wealth of literature and content.

The story we all know and we go into the film fully aware of what’s going to transpire within the next 2 hours. What the film does is create a cast of fleshed out and realised characters that get stories of their own before being eaten. From the stoic captain, to the religious cook, to the doctor who wants nothing more than to understand why the world works the way that it does, the crew of the Demeter become tangible characters and not just a number in the pages of this classic novel. While there is only so much you can do to bring a nameless pawn or henchman to life, the film manages to depict a compelling tale of a doomed crew that are forced to re-evaluate everything they believe in. The performances are all wonderful, everyone in every scene added depth and dimension to, what I remind you, is not much more than a single chapter in a book.

Image credit: screenrealm.com

The suspense and horror aspect of the film is achieved through an Alien style stalker use of the camera, very slow-moving shots, and stylistic closeups of the violence and gore. And then we have the villain himself. As it would be interesting but laughable to have Dracula as the captivating and charming, Gary Oldman style nobleman, the monster design returns to the classic horror of the 1920s with a Nosferatu monster with pointed ears, sharp talons, and spidery limbs. What I particularly enjoyed is the transformation that Dracula goes through on the voyage. Beginning the series of slaughters as weak, scrawny and feeble, he gains strength, shape, and even speech the more he feeds; finally regaining some semblance of a man by the film’s end.

While it’s not the greatest horror movie ever to slash its way onto a movie screen, Last Voyage of the Demeter is a fresh and creative depiction of a classic, playing on the tropes of the genre while also fleshing out a part of the novel that hardly ever gets remembered.

Director: Andre Ovredal, 2023

Cast: Corey Hawkins, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Chris Walley, Jon Jon Briones, Stefan Kapicic, Woody Norman, Martin Furuland & Aisling Franciosi