Nosferatu 2024, 1979, 1922 (Robert Eggers, Werner Herzog, FW Murnau)

The blood drinkers

(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in explicit and gory detail)

FW Murnau did a low-budget unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula titled Nosferatu (1922) which Stoker's widow pursued with a vengeance, demanding all prints and negatives be destroyed (despite which the film went on to achieve unholy immortality); Werner Herzog did a remake in 1979 employing ten thousand rats and his own inimitable filmmaking style; now Robert Eggers-- who professes admiration for the Murnau-- has crafted his own version, shifting emphasis from vampire to victim in his 2024 remake. 

And how does Eggers' compare? Well let me tell you.

The VVitch (Robert Eggers)

Super natural

Robert Eggers' debut feature The VVitch is suitably chaste and sensual--chaste in that it uses the absolute minimum in prosthetic (and digital) effects (thank god); sensual in that the whispery trees, the velvet night, the cracked bark of tree and coarse weave of cloth and unearthly aureole of moon have prominent place in the film's visual palette, to the point that the children's near-bloodless faces stand out in shocking contrast. You feel as if these young Puritans, their family freshly banished (for 'prideful conceit' apparently), are constantly mooning you with their pink milkfed cheeks; on the other hand the parents tend to blend into their surroundings--all dried timber and weathered stone, no pink or milk in them at all.