Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (2024) is a chilling resurrection of cinematic darkness… a film drenched in occult symbolism, religious inversion, and the eternal dance between innocence and decay. While many modern vampire tales romanticize their monsters, Eggers returns the creature to its infernal roots. His Nosferatu is not a tragic lover, but a sorcerer damned by his own pact with Satan, an incubus of death and desire. Through Ellen’s haunting descent into possession and sacrifice, the story becomes more than Gothic horror; it’s a spiritual void where God is absent and death reigns supreme. In this world of blood and shadows, the Maiden’s only way to defeat evil is through the same surrender that birthed it.

While it borrows from Dracula, it’s the story of Death and the Maiden. That trope originated in the Greek myth of Persephone, a beautiful maiden (virgin) in the meadows picking flowers when Hades notices and abducts her to the Underworld. It developed into medieval morality plays as a reminder that no matter how young, beautiful, or virtuous you are, Death can get you. It had its roots in pagan imagery (the marriage between innocence and decay) and in Christianity (if you could die at any moment, you better attend to the business of your eternal soul). The Maiden symbolizes innocence and youth, and Death represents the inevitability of mortality. There is no happy ending for the Maiden. She dies entwined in Death’s arms.

THE PLOT:

Director Robert Eggers takes us on a suspenseful and creepy journey into demonic possession and the plague. It is atmospheric, symbolic, and powerful in its presentation of evil, but neglects the divine.

A lonely young woman who feels abandoned by her father, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) cries out into the darkness of the night for an angel, a messenger, for anyone or anything to come to her… and an ancient voice wakens from its sleep to take possession over her. It tells her that her place is not among the living but the dead, and she will serve him to his purpose. At first, Ellen feels contented by this demonic force, but then her eyes open to behold the rotting corpse attacking her.

Years later, she is happily married to the love of her life, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult). In his desire to improve their standard of living, he accepts a commission from his new employer to travel thousands of miles to Transylvania to collect the signature of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) on the documents, pertaining to the recent sale of a decrepit castle in their small German town. He leaves his young wife in the care of his friends Frederich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Anna (Emma Corrin), but his wife soon descends into midnight fits, distraught over his life being at risk. She senses a threat long before he reaches the castle in the Carpathian Mountains and meets the Count. Rasping and wheezing his way around the castle, the Count strikes terror into his soul, but there is little Thomas can do to prevent the sale of the house so near his own. Nor does he know this desiccated corpse, who seems to sup upon his blood at night, is the demonic force that answered Ellen’s pleas for a friend that night so many years ago…

PERSONAL FEELINGS:

While I love the trend of making vampires romantic anti-heroes, I also enjoyed this story because it returns them to their horrific origins, complete with Transylvanian styling of the Count and his garments, and authentic Germanic and Romanian spoken by the natives. Orlok is never seen as sympathetic, or as anything other than a murderous succubus predator. Ellen is a lifelong, sexually abused victim with no control over her autonomy; Orlok punishes her with demonic fits, partial possessions, and by killing the people she loves, without remorse or compassion. He is evil incarnate, and she defeats him only by surrendering to him.

Eggers explains everything about Orlok, including his ability to influence people’s minds. He used to be an occultist sorcerer in life, who made a pact with Satan that he would rise from his grave and sup upon the blood of the living. Ellen’s call woke him from centuries of sleep, and he takes possession of her, leaving her without free will or conscious awareness of what happens amid her epileptic fits. There is nothing romantic about it; it’s disturbing as hell. Thomas’ terror of him is unparalleled and the best depiction of the horrors of Castle Dracula on screen. He trembles and sweats, waking with teeth marks in his chest, weak and chased by wolves in the castle. And there is an end to the monster, but not without a great personal cost.

I liked the different take on vampires, the faithful adherence to Thomas’ visit to Orlok’s castle, the tragic symbolism of a victim of assault conquering her rapist (even if it, spoiler, costs her life), the picturesque setting, the slow narrative, the exquisite costumes, the period-authentic details, and the homage to various famous pieces of art. If it had shown a little more restraint and kept van Franz as a man of faith rather than turning him into a devotee of the occult, it would be my favorite film of 2024. It’s well-acted, well-directed, and has a stellar cast who turn in terrific performances. The attentiveness to period detail is amazing. From a purely artistic point of view, it’s a visual masterpiece of Gothic Horror, but it may trouble your spirit. I found mine disheartened afterward. 

THEMES & SYMBOLISM

There is a lot of symbolism about female sexuality, demonic possession, encroaching evil, and the hideous nature of it, but it’s without Christian undertones. Instead of faith defeating the monster, it’s white magic and a human sacrifice. No one who prays or believes in God lives. Children who commit themselves to the Lord’s Prayer wind up being savaged in their sleep. Anna talks about how God is with them, but it renders her powerless against a monster who drives her insane, infects her with the plague, slaughters her twin girls, and kills her. Rather than invoke God’s name when dealing with Ellen’s possession, van Franz shouts the names of philosophers and occultists at him.

Why avoid religious undertones when they were the foundation of the Dracula novel that inspired this? Because the original film was produced by an occultist, and the director/writer wanted to remain true to his work in this reimagining. In this reality, God doesn’t exist. He is a phantom with no effect on the real world against monsters. Scenes of Ellen having demonic fits reminded me of exorcisms. She channels him or speaks under his influence, taunts her husband with him, spasms, convulses, and contorts, her eyes rolling back into her head and dripping saliva and ectoplasm. Christians know it is a possession, and van Franz says as much. He tells the audience the first battle against evil is to “admit it exists,” but… there is no good in the dark world Nosferatu inhabits, so there is no way to truly defeat it.

The actions of Orlok line up with demonology (demons and their behavior). They cannot enter a person without permission (just as in vampire lore, they cannot enter a house without consent or an invitation). They are sneaky in their “deals,” manipulative, possessive, and jealous. Often, they are not content with the companionship of mortals, but want full possession and bodily control as well, and some of them (if you believe accounts from people who dabbled in the occult or in vacating their body) want sexual congress.

Van Franz says that to defeat evil, you must first acknowledge it exists. Which is true. C.S. Lewis wrote that the devil has two tactics with humans; one is they don’t think he exists, and the other is he makes them obsessed with him. The first person is no threat to him; the second gives him more importance than he deserves. At one point, van Franz cries out, “Angels and demons, protect us!” as an occultist, which is useless in Christian lore but makes sense within occult lore, in which all spiritual entities choose a side regardless of their origins.

As Jesus said, one demon cannot cast out another. Instead of using a cross, Van Franz asks Ellen to “hold on to this talisman.” The cross does nothing to save her best friend, who talks constantly about how God will protect them, but who is brutalized, made mad, and killed by Orlok, after the discovery of finding her children sucked dry. (One interesting piece of foreshadowing I noticed is throughout the film, the girls reference a monster breathing under their bed, and not wanting to go to sleep because he will get them; Orlok is present in their lives because of their proximity to Ellen… yet no one listens to them or takes it seriously, even Ellen, who smiles it off as a child’s fancy, the “creature under the bed.” Only in this instance, the creature exists and intends to kill them.)

In the end, it is not fire or a wooden stake that kills Orlok, but Ellen gives herself to him and keeps him occupied until dawn, when the sun rises. But (spoiler), it kills her too, since he has drained her of every ounce of blood. Ellen becomes an occult Christ figure, because only she can defeat Death by giving herself over to him. While she destroys Orlok, she fulfills his prophecy. She is not meant for this world, but the world of the Dead. Von Franz even tells her that in a less civilized society she would be a High Priestess of a pagan temple.

I like the idea another writer suggested, that Nosferatu takes place in hell, and that is why God is ineffectual. He is not there. As a result, Ellen must sacrifice herself to destroy evil and escape hell.

Death & the Maiden

At the end of Nosferatu, as the incubus ravages the city with death and decay, Ellen realizes the only way to stop him is to give him what he wants, herself. She submits to him to save humanity in a symbolic reference to how only self-sacrifice and innocence defeat evil. Orlok drinks from her until the sun rises and steals their lives. The story cannot end any other way; she is the Maiden and must surrender to Death.

The unsettling allure of this trope comes from the human fear of death. It’s a place from which few return alive, so none of us knows what lies on the other side of it; only what our personal thoughts or religious beliefs tell us. We all know that one day, the soul that makes us who we are will depart our bodies and leave us a carcass. People across time tried to make sense of this mysterious and horrible “absence” (how could something I love be here and full of life one second, and gone the next?) by theorizing that our souls go to Heaven or Hades. Across a river, up into the clouds to be with the Gods, or deep into the bowels of the earth.

It fascinates me how ancient cultures told similar “horror stories” about loved ones returning to haunt or prey on the living, but never as themselves. Death has taken away that part of them capable of love and self-awareness, and changed them into a monster, a fearsome ghost, or a blood-sucking vampire, because our minds cannot fathom you could travel into the great unknown and return intact. Crossing over is “the end” of what we once were, and the start of something new. Because we fear what we do not understand, we create stories not only about what happens when you die but also about if you return. The living fear the dead.

I think this speaks to our collective awareness of spirituality and truth; we all know “something” outside of this mortal coil exists, and our hearts yearn to find it. As Lewis said, ancient myths and stories foreshadow the “myth that came true” in Jesus Christ. In Christian tradition, it is not the Maiden who defeats Death but Jesus. He saw it as the only way to defeat its shackles. Both of them surrender to Death, because only through surrender can they transcend and emerge victorious.