Robert Eggers is one of the best directors working in the horror genre today. Between The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman (not exactly a horror movie, but still falls in the same kind of genre space), the viewer might have a certain set of expectations when they walk into an Eggers movie. Perhaps the biggest film of his career arrives this Christmas, a remake of the classic horror tale Nosferatu. I had been eagerly anticipating this movie for months. I was fully excited by the idea of making the bleak and brutal Nosferatu my Christmas Day movie, but I got to see it early so I could write about it. Should you, as the advertising suggests, “succumb to the darkness this Christmas”?

Open on mid-1800s Wisborg, Germany. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is a troubled young woman married to Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), a real estate agent. Thomas is given an assignment to visit Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), a mysterious and shadowy figure who might want to purchase a property in the charming small village in which Ellen and Thomas live. Ellen has been haunted by something she can’t quite describe since childhood, but she has been able to keep the demons that haunt her at bay. As the time where Orlok is supposed to arrive becomes closer and closer, strange and unsettling things begin to happen.

Expectations play a strong part in how I felt walking out of Nosferatu. I expect Robert Eggers to go full on gonzo, weirdo, batshit crazy in his films. Part of what makes something like The Lighthouse or The Northman so exciting, is that I never could tell where these films were going and they kept finding new and fascinating ways of surprising me. You do know where Nosferatu is going, pretty much the entire time, if you’ve seen any previous iteration of this story, and how could this possibly be fresh to you at this point, if you’ve seen any horror movie? 

It brings me no pleasure to report that Eggers is playing it pretty safe with most of Nosferatu. This is a beautifully made film. The cinematography from Eggers’ frequent collaborator Jarin Blaschke goes back and forth between almost black and white, and plays around with a varied color palette, and it’s always interesting to look at. We also have a haunting score from Robin Carolan and some stunning period costume design by Linda Muir, the technical aspects of this are stunningly gorgeous and meticulously realized. It’s always exciting on a technical and craft level. However, it begins to fall short once you get beyond that.

The performances here are across the board quite good. The standout is Lily-Rose Depp, who is going full scream queen here, giving her performance a visceral intensity I did not know she was capable of. Nicholas Hoult is fine, but he’s mainly here to react to things. Emma Corin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are doing some good work as the rich and snooty couple who are friends of Ellen and Thomas, who are skeptical about what’s happening to her. Willem Dafoe shows up as a scientist who is called upon to help Ellen, and Dafoe is just having a ball these days.

That brings us to Bill Skarsgård, as our titular legendary vampire. Skarsgård has shown off some impressive range over the past few years, after playing Pennywise in the It movies, a well-dressed villain in a John Wick movie, a red-herring villain in Barbarian, to the lead in this year’s unfortunate The Crow remake, Skarsgård clearly likes to be buried in makeup and go full weirdo on us. And I appreciate that an actor as classically handsome as he is, is willing to go to all of these challenging places as an actor. He could settle for playing either an action lead or a romantic lead, but he’s clearly drawn to the bizarre and I love that about him. Skarsgård is truly unrecognizable as Count Orlok. I was actually surprised when I saw his name pop up as the first-billed cast member because I was wondering where he was in the film.

Overall, I think the sense of familiarity I have with this story kind of set me up for failure with Nosferatu. Robert Eggers clearly has such reverence for this source material and it’s clearly inspired so much of what he’s done in his career previously, that he seems a bit scared to fully make this thing his own. There are moments where either the violence is dialed up and he gets close to the kind of nuttiness that’s in his wheelhouse. And yet, the majority of Nosferatu feels frustratingly safe. It’s also annoyingly heavy on the jump scare. And yet, that isn’t to say there isn’t anything to enjoy here. The mood, the sense of dread, the performances, the cinematography, the score, the brutality of the sound design, it’s all tremendously effective. But I was never surprised, I was never scared, and I was never shaken to my core in the way that I have been with every Robert Eggers film up until this point.