Starring Bill Skarsgård, Nicolas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson

Directed by Robert Eggers

Focus Features/Universal in Cinemas now

An ambitious estate agent falls foul of a blood sucking client.

All right! All right! I know that my summation of the story above might not be entering into the spirit of things, but, technically, that is the plot, and flippancy aside it might explain why I struggled to engage with Robert Eggers’ remake of F. W. Murnau’s classic 1922 silent horror. I mean, there are a good few estate agents I’d have happily sent to the Carpathian mountains for an encounter with the undead.

My attempts to concentrate were further hindered, when Ralph Ineson, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Willem Dafoe animatedly went in search of eggnog. Surely I was hallucinating, having supped too many sickly beverages over the festive season. If you think this is comic hyperbole I swear to you I was genuinely mystified, until I realised they were talking about ‘Herr Knock’ (Nicolas Hoult’s bonkers boss played by Simon McBurney in full scenery – and pigeon-chewing mode) which for some reason they were pronouncing ‘Err Genog’.

While there’s much to enjoy in Nosferatu, it’s so all over the place, it’s hard to take it seriously, and that is a problem because I think Eggers does want us to care. Or rather, it’s like an old wireless set, drifting in and out of tune, sometimes earnest and (attempting to be) sensual, and in the next moment hammy and ridiculous.

Lily-Rose Depp is doing her very best to convince as Ellen Hutter, possessed by her vampiric stalker, caught in the world’s worst three-way with Nicolas Hoult’s Thomas, but it’s an uphill struggle when juxtaposed with Ineson, Taylor-Johnson, McBurney and Dafoe doing shouty 1970s RSC acting made worse by Eggers’ terrible cod ‘Olde Worlde’ dialogue. ‘You can type this shit, Robert…’ as Harrison Ford might have said.

Then there are the effects and art direction. One minute the movie is drawing on the Teutonic mysticism of Caspar David Friedrich, or the engravings of Francisco Goya at their most chilling and lunatic – and at times Nosferatu is visually arresting to genuine effect – but in the next moment we are in the comedy gothic of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies. In one scene the effects will be visceral and immersive, but in the next they will be laugh-out-loud hokey.

So is it frightening? No. Not in the slightest bit. Yes, there are one or two jump scares, but the best it has to offer are some amusing ‘eugh’ moments, made funnier by the crunchy, squelchy foley.

Eggers might have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for the pesky requirements of a well-crafted script. It’s not just that the dialogue is clunky, it’s that the movie has no centre. Just as we start to invest in a character (Nicholas Hoult is probably the most engaging of the cast) the film switches focus. In order to be truly frightened, the audience has to care, and they need to know who it is they are supposed to be caring about. Eggers needs to pick a side and stick with it, so we aren’t constantly resetting our attentions, and don’t have time to worry about eggnogs and estate agents or whether a certain scene could be filed under ‘Grindr Dates That Went Seriously Wrong’.

Verdict: Nosferatu has its moments, but the problem is that too many of them are laughable when it feels as if Eggers is aspiring to something more profound. Having said all that, it’s a fun couple of hours, especially if you harbour grudges against estate agents. 6/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com