Nosferatu

"Tom" (Nicholas Hoult) is lovingly married to "Ellen" (Lily-Rose Depp) but they haven't much money. That could change, though, as his boss "Knock" (Simon McBurney) charges him with a very special mission. He must travel from his German home to the mountains of Carpathia where he must facilitate the sale of a ruined manor house to the reclusive "Count Orlok" (Bill Skarsgård). His journey is riddled with portents of suspicion and doom; those he encounters warm him to turn back - but on he goes until he arrives at the castle and is greeted by his enigmatic host. What he thinks is the contract to seal the deal on the house is anything but, as he is soon tormented in his dreams. Many hundreds of miles away, his wife is also suffering - and that causes his best friend "Friedrich" (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to call in "Dr. Sievers" (Ralph Ineson) who in turn looks to the scientifically ostracised "Prof. von Franz" (Willem Dafoe) for some answers. There are no tangible causes, and the professor quickly concludes that it is evil that's at work and that the continuing and inexplicable absence of her husband, his employer and a recently arrived plague of rats are all part of the supernatural causes of her melancholy. There might be a solution, but that requires an act of supreme sacrifice on the part of the young "Ellen", or can her husband and his friends find another way? I'm not really a fan of two-parters, but I think in this case that might have been a better solution for Robert Eggers. We have a brief historical introduction to the Count and to the underlying cause of all of the troubles for "Ellen" but for the first hour of the film we don't really develop the characters enough, nor sow the seeds for the mysticism especially well. He relies too heavily on our knowledge of the Galeen story of "Nosferatu" (as opposed to the Bram Stoker "Dracula" one). I could have done with more depth to that chronology. Once "Orlok" is on his voyage and afterwards in the town where his merciless behaviour causes misery and panic, we seem to hit the accelerator and rush to the conclusion as if the cock really were about to crow any minute. There simply isn't time to allow the menace to accumulate. Though the visuals are impressively bleak, most of the acting is remarkably bland. Hoult manages to exude some decent terror now and again, but ATJ is really wooden; it takes too long for Depp to show us what she can bring to this under-exposed character and we just don't see anywhere near enough of the ghoulish "Orlok" to understand what this story is essentially all about. It's a gothic, dark, gloomy love story. A story of deceit and betrayal and I wanted more. I wanted to feel a little more invested in the characters: to sympathise, to pity, to fear, even. Perhaps a director's cut is in the offing? It's a great watch on a big screen, but I have to admit to being just a little disappointed.