r/moviecritic • u/thatreader24 • 1d ago
nosferatu is absolutely horrible Spoiler
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.
1
u/BaewulfGaming 19h ago
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.