Robert Eggers has always been a filmmaker obsessed with period detail and atmospheric dread. With Nosferatu, he has found the perfect vehicle for his obsessions — a film that feels like it was excavated from the 19th century rather than made in the 21st.
Bill Skarsgård's Count Orlok is a revelation — a creature of ancient malevolence rendered with practical effects and physical performance that make him genuinely terrifying. Lily-Rose Depp's Ellen is equally compelling, her vulnerability and obsession rendered with a specificity that elevates the material beyond mere genre exercise.
This is not a film for the faint-hearted. Eggers has made a vampire movie that is genuinely frightening — a reminder that horror, at its best, is cinema's most primal art form.