Nosferatu
Troy McClure: Yeah. It’s a good idea, Homer, but they’ve already made some movies about World War II.
Homer: Ah, hell. Well, what about Dracula?
The question I have to ask about making a new, unironic, straight down the middle Dracula in 2025 - and not even Dracula, a remake of a movie that was a Dracula knock off a hundred years ago - is really? And also, why? It’s very well made, Eggers has done a great job of making the creepy castle, and a large, intimidating not-Dracula. I completely forgot it was Bill Skarsgard until the credits rolled, he’s finding his niche of monster roles. Nicholas Hoult is a fine not-Jonathan Harker, and heck even Lily-Rose Depp, the picture in the dictionary next to Nepo Baby, does a good job as not-Mina. Is she English? If she’s not, she did a great job being English. The not-Renfield is intense and very gross, and it makes a lot of sense for him to be the estate agent and not some rando.
But the question remains, why? For all its formal goodness, I’m still sitting there thinking, ah this is the bit where he goes to the castle. Now there’s the boat journey (from Romania to Germany??) where Orlok kills every one. Now here’s Willem Dafoe as not-van Helsing telling everyone that the monster has to bed down in the soil he was buried in, and that’s where they can kill him, like this is within a thousand miles of new information.
Is Eggers doing a werewolf thing next? More Lighthouse, more Witch and less stuff I’ve already seen.