Saw Nosferatu on Christmas Day, had conflicting feelings over it. It’s one of those movies you want to be good because it does so many things so well but it just feels off somehow.
The positives- impeccable acting/ authenticity for the era, Eggers has always been good about this and you feel apart of the era by every single piece of it down to the verbiage and locale. It’s as authentic as it can be which is delightful. Acting is spectacular across the board. Cinematography is exceptional, all over the movie is shot beautifully.
The mixed- it’s 2 hours long but still feels rushed somehow, this is the downfall of trying to cram a Dracula esque story into a movie versus a series. However the 2 hours don’t feel like two hours because despite feeling rushed at parts it’s still engaging throughout.
The negatives- it doesn’t have dread, there are tense moments, there are some well done jump scares, even a bit of body horror. But at least for me there was no real dread and with no real dread it’s not real gothic horror. I didn’t fear for the characters, I didn’t feel that gnawing anxiety like I did reading Dracula for the first time. The other negative- it’s a “love triangle” like the classic Dracula, where you don’t feel the love between any of the triangle. Imagine if the Harkers in Dracula seemed cold and even antagonistic towards each other from the onset. The ending also heavily suffers because of this. That lackluster love also made the dread nonexistent and something that could have been fixed with and extra 30-40 minutes runtimes.
Overall it’s a movie that could have easily been an 8-9/10 with a few changes but suffers from not having the key component of gothic horror, dread. I would say 6.5/10. Worth watching simply for the immaculate authenticity to the era and acting.
Nerdrotic seemed to like it, and I’m sure the majority will say it’s at least worth watching.
That sounds like how I feel about all of Egger’s movies.
I think Witch is pretty close to perfect, but Lighthouse and Northman definitely have some issues. Always worth seeing an Egger’s flick, though.
I want to like his movies, but they all come off like he's trying to rub your face into how deep and intellectual and pensive he and his scripts are. I saw VVitch and Lighthouse, and while they had some interesting elements, the smugness of Eggers oozes through the screen. It's like they were written specifically for people who have that whole "Oh you've probably never heard of it, it's pretty high brow and esoteric, it's not really for normal people, you probably wouldn't like it" attitude. And when you don't like it, you get the usual "oh that's just because you didn't 'get it'" smug response. No, I got it. It just wasn't very entertaining. His 'it's like a total mind-fuck maaaan' schtick wasn't new even back when Kubrick was doing it, or even when HR Geiger was painting it or Lovecraft was writing it. You're not deep for appreciating it, nor shallow for giving it a wide berth.