nosferatu is absolutely horrible

[u/thatreader24]

saw nosferatu tonight and i'm not even close to a regular movie critic, but i don't know if i've ever seen a worse movie. i walked out of the theater with my mind absolutely blown, (and possibly destroyed). how did this even make it to theaters, and even more importantly, how does this movie have 87% on rotten tomatoes?? it was disgusting to say the least. wish i could bleach my eyes and my brain.

spoiler alert

edit: i will say that i had pretty much no problem with it until she's possessed and says something about her husband not being able to please her like the vampire could, and then in what seems like an attempt to prove a point, they start aggressively banging? like...who had that idea? at that point the whole movie was pretty much ruined for me, and then it somehow managed to get worse as the movie went on, which ruined it even further. i do think that it started off strange, alluding to her as a child allowing this vampire to come into her soul or whatever, it's pretty weird. but up until that specific scene, and the many ones that would soon follow, having any chance of liking this movie was gone for me.

[u/FlakyImportance9529]

It was absolutely delicious. Appreciate you not feeling the same but I thought it was a treat start to finish. Beautifully shot and arranged. Excellent use of lighting and music. Shakespearean script wonderfully acted.

It was a bit grotesque but it comes with the genre.

[u/Max_Cherry_ → u/FlakyImportance9529]

OP barely explains why they didn’t like it and just calls it disgusting. Worthless critique. Feels like bait to me.

[u/InteractionSilent268 → u/Max_Cherry_]

They didnt like it...because theres a sex scene? I didnt love the movie, its beautifully made though and i can articulate why i didnt love it. This guy wrote a few paragraphs of nonsense.

[u/Max_Cherry_ → u/InteractionSilent268]

I actually appreciated everything they said in contrast to the OP of this post. At least they were detailed.

Their first point about Eggers making a movie about X but the movie proves the opposite makes sense. But if you can only apply that idea to 2 of the last 4 movies he’s made I don’t think that’s a strong point of n terms of criticizing his film making. It’s like, yeah I guess being a religious zealot was the preferable outcome compared to everyone dying and becoming a witch-hag. It would be a different movie if the message or the way the events played out showed that being a religious really wasn’t the best thing. Are we even meant to infer a message from The Witch? From Nosferatu?

Saying the characters were hatable is not a very strong point either. Are we supposed to love every character? All the reasons they list are just saying things that happened in the movie and saying I didn’t like that. She let her friend die. Ok, well, there’s some crazy vampire possession ritual happening. I’m not sure if Helen is really expected to just fall on the sword and sacrifice herself to save her friend.

In terms of rooting for a character in Nosferatu, it was Dafoe for me. While I’m fine with it, I see how this me could say most of the characters were weak. I thought the acting was good, but none of the characters were particularly strong or interesting. Except Dafoe IMO.

I’m not sure what they mean by wokeness. I thought it was un-woke to portray these men basically treating their women like a lesser class of human being.

The film barely showing the Count makes sense. I almost never like “reveals” and I prefer the Count being kept in shadows most of the time. I thought it was creepier and more menacing. The times we could see him in his entirety I didn’t enjoy as much because he wasn’t all that scary to me when fully visible. If you prefer being able to see the monster frequently and in full visibility, that’s cool. But in my opinion they go on to conflate visual visibility with sense of presence. The way they explain what they mean makes sense and I can’t say I disagree. I might have liked the movie more if the alternative they described was true. From watching the film you have the knowledge and some sense that Orlok has sort of omnipotent occult powers and is in control, but I guess it wasn’t this weighted feeling of helplessness.

They apparently have a problem with the mixed messaging of lust is bad but then people giving into lust is such a heavy theme. Or rather if lust is so bad why have so much lust in the movie? This nitpick feels so contrived. As much as I appreciate their critique and even agree with some of what they said, I feel like they’re eventually writing negative criticisms out of contrarianism. This is supposed to be a retelling of an unofficial retelling of Dracula. I haven’t seen Coppola’s Dracula or 1920’s Nosferatu, but is lust leading to downfall a consistent theme? If so, how is this even a complaint?

They say it wasn’t scary and I agree. I’m fine with that. It didn’t diminish anything for me. In fact I appreciated that it wasn’t scary in the sense I think they mean. I liked that it was graphic, creepy, and unsettling even if it wasn’t scary the way movies like Hereditary or Sinister are scary. At least to me.

They nitpick over the mustache but I think they’re misunderstanding Egger’s explanation. I read it as Orlok had a mustache because Lords of his time commonly had one.

All in all, if these are the reasons they don’t like it, that’s fine. I do think they’re trying hard to criticize it though.

[u/InteractionSilent268 → u/Max_Cherry_]

People are looking for messages in the most straightforward stories. A witch terrorizes a family of religious zealots and the witch wins! Whats the message?! No message, its just a scary story.

[u/Max_Cherry_ → u/InteractionSilent268]

Exactly.

[u/Agreeable_You8769 → u/Max_Cherry_]

Tedious wordy nonsense.

[u/BaewulfGaming → u/Max_Cherry_]

The movie was terrible.

Eggers has a problem with saying his movies are about "x" of then the actual movie proves the opposite. This movie was about embracing lust? Apparently though it's bad to lust because then you'll draw a dead plague dude to you. In The Witch. It's bad to be a paranoid religious zealot? Well apparently not because she did indeed go with the devil and become a witch. Eggers says one thing then does another when it comes to the themes.

The characters were all very hateable, or even forgettable. In my opinion, Lily Rose Depp was kind of a psycho bitch in this film. First of all, she was rude to her husband several times, and she let her friend die on the second night by not giving in to Orlok before her death. She knew that was going to happen, she said so to her friends husband the ship guy, and then to Van Helsing, or whatever Dafoe's character was. Then during the funeral she had "no more tears to cry". Um, ok?

There was just an overall "wokeness" to the film that sort of tainted the period piece of it all. The dig at "female anxieties and melancholy", the piece of advice from the doctor saying to have her sleep in her corset for posture or just tie her down, van helsing/dafoe saying basically her taking back the power of her sexuality is what will kill the vampire, Lily Rose Depp constantly being mad at one person or another, blah blah blah. It just didn't fit the time, didn't make the characters likeable, and was not needed.

They barely showed Count Orlok, and when they did, he was a hunched over decrepit old man. He had NO presence in this film. And I absolutely love Bill Skarsgard. But the writing of Orlok was seriously lacking. In Coppola's Bram Stokers Dracula, they did an AMAZING job making it feel like Dracula was everywhere. He was always watching, always playing with things in the girls life, and was a real force to be feared. In Egger's film, he has NO presence. He was not scary. Not to mention they go the whole film saying he can't love her, he's just a monster with an insatiable appetite, then at the end they kiss? Why? His character should just bit her neck. Why the hell do they kiss if all that is true?

There was some strange need to make the film vulgar. Again, why? If this film is about lust then why have lust be so awful? Like the ship man having sex with his wife's dead body in the mausoleum in front of their kids' bodies? Lily Rose Depp and her husband having like angry sex when she says he can't please her like Orlok can. All of her "outbursts" being clearly sexual in nature.

It wasn't scary. There were also several direct rip-offs of Coppola's film that were just done worse. And many "special effects" that looked horrible, if not worse then Coppola's, who in 1993 didn't even have CGI.

I guess there were some shots that looked cool....that's pretty much the only good thing that came from the film. Don't even get me started on his damn moustache...which Eggers said was because "all Transvanian men at the time had moustaches".....ok, but Orlok isn't of that time. Pretty sure he wouldn't have been keeping up with the trends, either.

Overall, I was really disappointed with this film. Especially after how AMAZING The Northman was. I'd hoped maybe Eggers had finally hit a good stride.

[u/Accomplished-Head449 → u/BaewulfGaming]

I'd rather watch Conan over The Northman, and I'd sure as hell would rather watch this Nosferatu over the other two

[u/BaewulfGaming → u/Accomplished-Head449]

Not sure why, just explained almost everything that's wrong with it 🤣

[u/Cap-Mindless → u/Accomplished-Head449]

Well, as evidenced by your tastes, we can deduce that Nosferatu does in fact suck.

[u/New-Smile-3013 → u/BaewulfGaming]

Holy shit, you summarized everything I disliked about this movie. Biggest disappointment in years especially with how much I loved The Lighthouse

[u/TheNoNonsenseNinja → u/BaewulfGaming]

Yeah, I was really hoping someone was going to slap the shit out of Ellen at some point.

[u/ImaginaryAdvantage71 → u/FlakyImportance9529]

Could not disagree more. The cinematography wasted the locations with too many medium shots and bad transitions, the music was laborious and extremely loud for no reason with unnecessary clamorous hits, the sound effects failed to build any actual tension, the lighting was mediocre, the script failed to use the lead effectively... Actually, the script failed the entire production.

It's unfortunate, because I was really hoping for a well-shot, well-produced moody gothic horror, but what we got was a poorly shot, badly cut, loud and annoying slog of a movie, and that is not what the trailers sold me on.

Have to agree with the OP; I cannot understand the Rotten Tomatoes scores on this film. It wasn't even mediocre. I was terribly disappointed.