The way I see it, The VVitch is better than The Lighthouse which is better than The Northman which is better than Nosferatu. So, yeah, each of Eggers’ movies has been worse than the last. Gladly, he started with one of the all-time greats, so he has room to work with.

I’m not saying Nosferatu is a bad movie. Quite the opposite. It’s not a top 10 movie for me for last year but that’s more about the strength of last year’s crop than weakness of the film. A new Eggers movie is still an event for me.

The original Nosferatu is in public domain so you can find it easily on YouTube, for example, and no need to buy it either even if YouTube is going to try to sell it to you. Here’s one 4k remastered.

Then there’s the Herzog version from late 70s and the one we are going to be talking about right now.

So, this is the third version of the movie and since it is basically Dracula (Bram Stoker is even listed as a writer), you know the story pretty well. Count Orlok is interested in Ellen and uses the boss of Ellen’s husband, Tommy, to get that husband out of the city so that Orlok can move in and seduce Ellen. This new version is about 50 minutes longer than the original which leaves a lot of room for expansion of the relationship between Orlok and Ellen as well as completely new character who has a major role.

Now, of course Eggers has done his research and the movie is steeped in both scientific knowledge of the early 19th century in Germany as well as various superstitions in the Carpathians. A lot of work was done to make sure everything looks correct and while they don’t talk German, they do talk in proper period ways.

The movie also looks great. It clearly has those German Expressionist roots. They changed Count Orlok’s look but that is fine. He looks sort of human now, so it’s much more realistic that Tommy would be willing to talk to him. In the original Tommy just disregards any kind of a warning sign even if his boss looks completely disheveled and Orlok looks like a shaved rat. Orlok is still ominous, although we hardly even see him clearly at any point in the movie.

Eggers did go a bit far with the additions. Some things in the film move very slowly and not in a satisfying way. Also, we have seen his visual style. How much more of that do we need?

Again, this is still a very good movie, but it is a little concerning that his films have been getting worse. I don’t think this is M. Night Shyamalan situation and I do think we can still use more of his films but there needs to be some kind of a course correction here. Do I know what it is? No. Perhpas I’ll just learn to accept his style and be happy with it in the future and perhaps I’m putting too much emphasis on my love of VVitch.