Nosferatu

How did I come out of a vampire film thanking Our Lady?

I don’t tend to watch horror films; I think there is enough horror in the world frankly – why purposely watch someone’s most darkest imaginings? However, Vampires, or a term used by Bram Stoker in Dracula – Nosferatu (meaning undead) has always held a fascination with me. I must admit here that I did indeed watch Buffy in my teen years. Thankfully I missed the Twilight craze though!

I haven’t watched too many Vampire films since but the other night I decided to go and watch the 2024 Robert Eggers film, Nosferatu, starring Wilhelm Defoe, Lily Rose-Depp, Nicholas Hault and Bill Skarsgard – mostly because of the excellent Defoe and Skarsgard I have to say.

Nosferatu is a remake of the famous 1922 silent film which, after released was pursued in the courts by Bram Stokers widow as a rip-off of Dracula, and in fact was nearly entirely lost as the studio sought to destroy the film later. Vampire films, especially Dracula remakes often show a suave charismatic figure as the infamous Count – think of the Gary Oldman or Tom Cruise version. However, the Nosferatu version of Dracula in both 1922 and 2024 shows an almost half rodent half dead humanoid. His instincts are closer to animal but with a dark twist. In one scene, Nosferatu calls himself ‘an appetite, nothing more, nothing less’. He does not turn others into Vampires, he consumes them. This is no angsty Twilight series film or flabby action-gothic Underworld. The Count not only walks in darkness but is that terrible kind of darkness that seems suffocating, which the film portrays superbly.

At the start of the film, we meet a young newly married and very much in love, Ellen and Thomas who are setting up home. Ellen though, we already know has a dark secret – when she was young, and in misery, seeking affection and tenderness she called out for it, and in the dark, she was answered and in her dreams each night she would be stalked and brutalised by it. However, now married, she seems free of it. Her Thomas puts all her dreams down to fancies and past melancholies – this is after all 1838. Science, industry and market economics has begun replacing the old superstitions and ways of doing things. This is repeatedly sounded throughout the film but becomes more like desperate plea’s as it continues. It begins with Thomas being sent to the far-off Carpathian Mountains to meet the strange Count Orluk who wishes to buy a mansion in the fictitious German city of Wisborg. There the Count reveals himself as a Vampire and tries to consume Thomas –, but Thomas is not the centre of the Counts obsession, or indeed the hero – it is Ellen. For it was he that she called to as a girl, and for her the Nosferatu is coming. Like all good horrors we have the ominous ‘he is coming’ line turn up to prime us for terror.

Eggers version follows the Count as he is transported on a boat across the Baltic sea along with a vast number of deadly rats that will bring plague to Wisborg. Bear in mind the world was still reeling in 1922 from the 1918 flu. What are our protagonists to do? In steps a disgraced Professor, played by the excellent Wilhelm Defoe, having been lauded but now dismissed for becoming more enamoured with Alchemy and the Occult. Of the themes in this film the tension between modern rational thought and older fears and beliefs is perfectly combined in this professor. Indeed, one of his great lines when arguing about the existence of the Nosferatu is when he says we are blinded by our gaseous science. In another great line he tells us that we to see the evil to understand it, we could not look away or rationalize it sophistically.

But what really fascinated me was how the Nosferatu could be defeated. It was not going to be wooden stakes or serums; it was through the woman Ellen. She had to realise her powers, not in terms of magic but in terms of her ability to hold the obsession of the Vampire, for we realise that for all his deadly terror and powers, he was in effect at her mercy. It is only at the end she acknowledges this and willing submits to him as a sacrifice. His appetite was his undoing, and her sacrifice saved Wisborg.

I came out of the film thinking of and thanking Our Lady. There is an inference here, but a perversion of it – the opposite in fact. A modern feminist take on Mary and her story of the Virgin birth is one of a Male power forcing itself upon her. In this retelling, Mary had no agency and could only accept her fate. Here in Nosferatu we see this theme, but Ellen’s fate is not to meekly acquiesce; she must learn that as Female, she has the power to undo the destruction wrought by the Male.

However, this was not what happened with Mary. Her Yes was not the acceptance of a sexualised divine fantasy. God was not obsessed with her, and He is not an appetite for He needs nothing. Mary understood her role was indeed a part of the salvation of the world, her Yes was joyful, if probably perplexed. She was not simply a carrier but an integral part of the incarnation through which none of us could be saved. For those reasons she was crowned Queen of Heaven and given special place and role in all our lives.

The film is creepy and chilling, rather than scary- its not a blood fest. But one of the things that makes it so disturbing is that it holds up a mirror to ourselves. Like in the Matrix when Smith described humans as a virus, so here we are confronted with all that our desires have wrought. Whether they be about persons, or power or things and the associated damage we do – what can release us from that slavery as portrayed by the Vampire in his obsession with Ellen? The film uses fire as a sanctifying force, as does God. But His fire is that of the Holy Spirit who refines us into pure Gold. His fire is so we can live in the Beloved. Being released from slavery is the yes of Mary everyday to Him.

I won’t go too much more into the ending of the film, although I have done a good job of spoiling it for you if you are yet to see it. I would recommend seeing it, but unlike most horrors out there, its not the blood or terror of the monster that it leaves you with – it’s the questions about humanity and the sources of evil.

By Eric Hanna - Editor