‘Nosferatu’ review: Freaky remake crowns a new King of Horror

nypost.com:

Pennywise the Clown in “It”: Count Orlok, the undead villain of F.W. Murnau’s seminal silent vampire masterpiece from 1922.Skarsgård, adopting a deep and unsettling Carpathian accent, is petrifyingly creepy and unexpectedly alluring as he becomes what is basically Dracula.Murnau’s ingenious black-and-white original was an unauthorized German version of Bram Stoker’s novel that changed names, places and minor plot points to resonate with Deutschland. (He still got sued.) But the tale, set in gloomy and repressive 1838, hews closely to that of the OG bloodsucker.

And, although nearly an hour longer and with audible dialogue, “Nosferatu 2024” also stays the storytelling course of its classic cinematic forefather.

Eggers, whose “The Witch” cemented him as a visionary of the horror genre, is clearly a devoted fan of Murnau’s film. Rightly so.Most at home in the dark, Eggers embraces “Nosferatu’s” famous shadows, Orlok’s long, spindly fingers, suffocating Victorian-era rooms, thousands of disgusting live rats and doors magically creaking open by themselves and seductively updates it for today’s eyes and ears.

Another shrewd piece of casting is the haunting Nicholas Hoult as Thomas, a naive real estate agent who’s sent by his eccentric employer Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) to Transylvania to get a contract signed by a wealthy home buyer — Orlok.He bids farewell to his wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), and rides to the castle by horseback.