Nosferatu (15)

Robert Eggers’s passion project is lavish, luxurious and lurid on the grandest of scales.

Captivated by F.W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece since first encountering it on VHS at the age of nine, Eggers staged a high school play inspired by the film and has dreamed of bringing it back to the big screen ever since 2015. In many ways, it’s the film he was destined to (re)make, as the haunting influence of Murnau’s eerie classic can be traced through his first three period films: The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman.

Following in the footsteps of both Murnau and Werner Herzog, he follows the outline of Bram Stoker’s Gothic classic Dracula. Set in 1838 in Germany, his Nosferatu details the obsession between a haunted young woman, Ellen Hutter, and the ancient Transylvanian vampire stalking her, Count Orlok, leading to untold horror.

Led by powerhouse performances from Lily Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgård, it is simply one of the best executed and best looking iterations of “Dracula” ever filmed. Egger’s key intention here, it seems, was to rescue the vampire from its twinkly tween era and to return it to its folkloric roots. And it is every bit as nightmarish and alluring as expected.