While Robert Eggers’s ‘Nosferatu’ Is Visually Stunning, the Film Is Burdened by Its Director’s Hubris

The original story has been tweaked with more gore, more sex, and more more. What survives is an exhausting display of technical know-how at the expense of artistic necessity.

Via Focus Features
Lily-Rose Depp in 'Nosferatu.' Via Focus Features

Art historians, particularly those who specialize in Western art, are recommended to spend their hard-earned dollars on the least merry of Christmas entertainments, Robert Eggers’s “Nosferatu.” Should these scholars happen to carry flasks of spirits into their local cinemas, they are advised to resist playing a drinking game whenever Mr. Eggers explicitly quotes the work of this-or-that painter. Inebriation, fast and thorough, will result. 

Working with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and production designer Craig Lathrop, Mr. Eggers recreates the distinctive light and compositional structures of any number of artists, largely those hailing from the northern climes of Europe. The keening light, fabulous costumes, and picturesque period trappings are, like, wow: Mr. Eggers and his crew have crafted a film of exacting visual splendor.

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