I find myself smiling as I watch one of the greatest films ever created. Nosferatu (2024, Robert Eggers) left much to the imagination through the telling of the film. There wasn’t a moment where I wasn’t captivated even during its “dead” moments. When it was over, I said aloud, “that was a damn good movie”.

Nosferatu does a fantastic job of incorporating doom and death with it’s cinematography. The lighting is dark and moody accentuating the cold of the winter but not so dark that you cannot see what is being shown.

This is not your typical horror jump scare film which makes it a masterpiece of its own. Nosferatu takes you on the journey of each character and wastes no time getting to the plot. And if you are familiar with the storyline of Nosferatu or Dracula, then you know the plot well. With that in mind, Nosferatu allows you to focus less on the plot and more on how the movie was actually filmed.

Snow is everywhere in this film. Literally. It makes you wonder how hard it could have been to film something of this stature in almost blizzard-like weather. The snow itself is a character and adds to the depth of death within the film.

Lots of people have been giving Lily-Rose Depp quite some crap about being a nepo baby (the infamous Johnny Depp is her father) and scoring this role but this being her first big-time film, she acted insanely good. Maybe because it is in her blood or maybe she’s been taking classes but either way she did a phenomenal job playing the role of the film’s heroine, Ellen Hutter.

We don’t get to see Nosferatu until the very end of the film in the last scene. Throughout the film his identity progresses and we are forced to keep watching wondering if we would ever see him or if they would show him sooner than planned. While there are moments we see outlines of his face or half of his face, we don’t see him in his entirety until the end adding a sense of anxiousness or dread to the film.

Bill Skarsgard plays Nosferatu and is by far the best vampire I have seen on screen. This tracks because if you are not familiar with the name he also played the very terrifying Pennywise in Andres Muschietti’s It. He seems to nail the more unpleasant film characters which just turns out to be the best versions of characters we are familiar with. Some people may also be wondering what’s the difference between Nosferatu and Dracula and it all comes down to their characteristics.

Gary Oldman as *Dracula* (Bram Stoker, 1992)

Nosferatu is an animal-like figure. Claws for hands that remind you of werewolf hands, abnormally tall but a hunch-back figure. Not pleasant on the eyes at all - very disturbing. Dracula on the other hand is more human-like passing for a normal man but can take form in other ways as well with its preferred entity being man. When filmmakers and writers portray vampire characters it is usually a more “Dracula form” meaning human-like because it is believed that it is easier to seduce and catch prey that way. Think of any vampire character you know, I can bet they look good and thus making the “love story” a bit easier to digest. Nosferatu is quite the opposite.

Overall, I would rate this film a 9.5/10. A 10/10 film would mean there would be absolutely no flaws whether that be in the actors or in the way the film was shot. I have very few films that are a 10 for me in the horror universe so Nosferatu is very good to be ranked this high for me.