So, I’ve been feeling fairly mixed about the Robert Eggers remake of Nosferatu that will be hitting theaters this Christmas after seeing the trailer a couple weeks ago.
In my twenties and early thirties, I was lowkey obsessed with Murnau’s 1922 original. I still own about a half dozen versions of it on several forms of media. I’ve read numerous articles, essays, bits of trivia. I used to know a lot of details about Florence Stoker’s lawsuit to have the film destroyed for copyright infringement. I sat through the Herzog/Kinski remake numerous times. Watched Dafoe and Malkovich in Shadow of the Vampire.
Seriously, I used to know this film and all lore and adjacent lore frontward and backward.
I’m watching the trailer, and I’m asking myself if i have it in me to venture into the land of phantoms and robbers once again.
In early November of 1992, I’m outside of hometown theater. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is opening that weekend and I was unbelievably excited. An A list cast. A legendary director. All coming together to bring the grandaddy of vampire novels onto the screen. A book i had been obsessed with since literally before I could read. Just the thing I needed to ease the difficulties I was having transitioning from high school into adulthood from my mind for one night.
A couple of hours later, I’m walking home, confused, a little frustrated, but mostly just feeling let down.
Someone had taken something I loved, characters I loved and screwed it up.
It had moments of horror in it, but it wasn’t a horror movie.
It was just noisy melodrama.
No one tells you this about November in Minnesota, but, after Halloween is over … that is when it becomes genuinely eerie at night here.
The nights becoming just a little darker, a little quieter, and often very, very still.
When he crossed over into the land of phantoms, the phantoms came to meet him.
As I watched the trailer for Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu, I felt like I was walking home that night from nearly 32 years ago, all over again.
I’m hoping that I feel differently in a few months.
