Penetration is the point

Robert Eggers shows his disdain for the modern world with his small but impressive body of work as a director. His movies are fastened to a harsh, cold gloominess with the lingering presence of something menacing. 

Eggers showers his affection for history with amazing detail and a love for the atmosphere not overrun by industrialization. His landscapes are cloaked in intangible magic.

Nosferatu is a remake of a filmic legacy of horror for Eggers and for cinema fans all over the world. 

Eggers grew up seeing the 1922 German silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, directed by F.W. Murnau. The fact that we can still access this 1922 masterpiece is a miracle, despite the litigation brought by Dracula author Bram Stoker’s widow, who argued Nosferatu poached the novel without permission. 

The film lost the case, and the ruling ordered that all copies be gathered and destroyed. One remaining copy was discovered later, allowing us to witness how a horror film fan grew up to become a master of the macabre.

Nosferatu shows that cinema, indeed, is the director’s art form. Yet, this movie would not work without Lily-Rose Depp (Ellen Hunter) and Bill Skarsgård (Count Orlok). These two engage in a spectral tug-of-war between desire and consumption. 

Orlok growls, “I am appetite. Nothing more,” a glorious discussion on the nature of monstrosity. Monsters are clues to what a society fears. At the rise of the bourgeoisie in Europe, a monster represented unbridled sexual energy. To be bitten was to die. The penetration was the point. 

The bite began as a vector for diseases. It’s quite Freudian—vampires. The point is to be punctured with the promise of draining bodily fluids into a vessel. That sounds quite sexual, doesn’t it? Appetite is the monstrosity, as infected bodies writhe in consumption.

But intrinsically, the battle in Nosferatu is not simply good versus evil, but (1) modern versus ancient, or logic versus magic, and (2) desire versus despair, where both lead to pain and can only be battled by determination. The casual moviegoer might find this film too dark and too grotesque, but fellow horror film fans would claim this is among the best vampire movies of recent times because it makes no apologies for the truth—that violence and sensuality are two truly monstrous bedfellows.

Depp shows how far she is willing to go to portray possession as she contorts her body and drools into a drunken stupor. Thank goodness she got her father Johnny Depp’s acting capacity and none of his looks. She gets her mother Vanessa Paradis’ piercing eyes and formidable facial structure.

Skarsgård is famous for portraying another monster, Stephen King’s It’s Pennywise the Clown. While Pennywise is an active and volatile monster, Count Orlok is lumbering, glacial, and rotting. With a wheeze and a growl, Orlok’s raspiness sounds like the scuttering of rats’ feet clawing at the rotten wood of an abandoned castle. This movie is a devious, cold breath of a monster whispering in your ear, asking you to succumb.

You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social