Vampires rarely seem to fade into the shadows of the entertainment industry. The iconic horror creatures are simply too well-known and loved to not be drawn from regularly by writers and filmmakers. In recent decades, we’ve seen the deployment of vampires swing around wildly, but with the return of one of the all-time great vampires, Count Orlok, perhaps those who feast on human blood will be brought back into the horror genre for a while.
Impact of the Classic Nosferatu
Loosely adapting the pre-eminent works of the 1897 Bram Stoker novel Dracula, in 1922, a silent German film brought a new level of terror to the vampire mythos. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror holds up surprisingly well, even over 100 years on, continuing to be an iconic character and depiction of particularly spooky vampires, living on in pop culture in undead malevolence.
For its time, the work of F.W. Murnau was incredibly innovative, utilising shadow, light, and distinct angles to relay the mood, emotions, and setting without sound or colour. It was minimalist, enforcing the claustrophobic experience, and leading to such iconic shots as the shadow of Count Orlok growing on the ground. Nosferatu reinvented what it is to be a vampire on-screen, offering a distinct alternate reality of sorts to Count Dracula.
Versatile Vampires Across All Genres
There are romantic elements to Dracula and Nosferatu as two tales of a legendary vampire, but for the most part, the vampire was a creature of horror. Of course, in the folklore that inspired the entertainment products, vampires were evil. In the past, we’ve seen many creatives draw vampires away from horror.
More recently, we’ve had the more true-to-source Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie, the action-packed Van Helsing (2004) and Dracula Untold (2014), the use of vampires as twist in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), then there was the romantic, alluring vampires phase on both the big screen and shows like True Blood (2008) on the small screen. Now, we have comedic vampires in What We Do in the Shadows (2014) and Renfield (2023).
The ability for film and TV show creatives to so flippantly shift the genre of vampires has poured over into other corners of entertainment, too. In particularly competitive forms of entertainment, it’s important to catch trends with new creations. This is why platforms offering online slots now feature vampire themes mimicking this lack of genre confinement. Immortal Romance and Immortal Desire play to the romantic side, Blood Suckers II and Blood Thirst are much more grounded in horror, and there’s even an official The Lost Boys slot out there now.
Early Thoughts on 2024’s Nosferatu
To make clear that this is a work in homage to the 1922 classic German film, Nosferatu premiered in Berlin on 2 December 2024, with its full cinematic run set to commence from 25 December in the United States. As such, many critics have already seen the film, and in what’s an all-too rare move these days, the production company gave the green light for reviews to be released, rather than put them under an embargo until its full release.
At the time of writing, the critical consensus rated the film very highly. From 25 critic reviews submitted to Metacritic, Nosferatu (2024) came away with a hefty 83 out of 100 score, earning it the Must-See label from the platform. The A.V. club, Screen Rant, The Wrap, Collider, and particularly The Independent, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Daily Beast, all gave Robert Eggers’ remake glittering review scores. Some were a bit more mixed, though.
Some, like The Guardian, gave it a more middling score for walking between being scary and self-conscious, but still praised its stylisation, how it was shot, and its devotion to the 1922 original. In fact, that’s a theme that runs through almost all reviews: Nosferatu 2024 is very faithful to the German silent film. Starring Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård, James Bond frontrunner Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nicholas Hoult, Emma Corrin, and Eggers favourite Willem Dafoe, there’s certainly enough talent in front of the camera to realise the writer-director’s vision.
Nosferatu’s return to the cinema, if it has the success the reviews would suggest, could be the catalyst for getting much more horror-focussed vampire films on the big screen in the years to come.
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