#I honestly wish eggers had done dracula instead of nosferatu

[jaggedcliffs]

I had been watching the original 1922 Nosferatu on youtube over the past week (with no intention of seeing the new one, I was just curious since I'd never seen it, only Shadow of the Vampire) when a friend texted me to see if I wanted to see Eggers' 2024 remake on Friday.

with the 1922 version fresh in my mind and having read/listened to Dracula about five times by now, I can confidently say that Eggers' version is half 1922 Nosferatu adaptation, half novel Dracula adaptation, with a splash of The Exorcist and firm rebuke against Coppola's shitty Drac/Mina's "romance."

and it is still by far the best Dracula adaptation out there

[seraph5]

Finally got around to seeing Nosferatu. I'm a big Eggers stan and think he really puts his whole bussy into every movie he makes so that's my bias on the table. My spoiler-full thoughts are below.

Aesthetically it is going off queen, though there is no surprise there as Eggers is nothing if not a lover of Gothic period design. I gotta say it was maybe one of the most authentic treatments of the vampire idea I have ever seen on screen. The feeding is disgusting, in dracula they liken him to a leech and this is definitely that vibe. The gore is absolutely repulsive.

Many adaptations tend to treat the influence vampires have as prominently sexual in nature but Eggers version of the influence is dreamlike, surreal and inescapable - like a kind of gravity the characters are helpless to resist and I really loved that choice. It felt much more supernatural in that way. Not that there wasn't a sexual element at times obviously but most sexual elements felt like a violation and that choice was much more in keeping with the classic horror intent. I even loved the idea that Ellen's burgeoning sexuality was what awoke Orlock - that felt so mythological and a really good edit for why Orlock is going to England and goes after Ellen specifically. Also the victim blaming of Orlock being like 'you being sexual is the fault of all this - I have absolutely no autonomy in this situation and all these people I am killing is your fault" is so appropriately villainously sexist.

Honestly I kind of really wish Eggers had just done Dracula instead of Nosferatu. I can see why he did Nosferatu, it's a much easier adaptation, but weirdly the treatment of the female characters is so much richer, more interesting and bizarrely way less sexist in the OG dracula text (not that it isn't sexist but good God do they have so much more to do and think and say in the OG). I would say the same generally of the male characters, they are so much more likeable and interesting as characters in the OG text.

I actually don't really think Eggers necessarily did anything wrong. I think he set out to make a faithful remake of an ancient black and white horror film and in that respect he killed it dead.

I think where it falls down is where most adaptations fall down and that is not imbuing the lead characters with that likeableness, the innocence, the resolve and the camaraderie that they share. What gives the story such horrifying stakes is that you care about them and only my sweet Re: Dracula has really pulled that off, in my opinion, so far.