The first time I saw the original Nosferatu, it was a 16mm print with the tinting restored – blue for night, amber for day. I’ve never seen the Herzog Nosferatu in theater, only on video and DVD. All of the different versions struck me in different ways. They were beautiful and horrific and sad in their own ways. So I looked forward to seeing Robert Egger’s version of Nosferatu (2024).
Anyone expecting nonstop jump scare terror or young Gary Oldman levels of sexuality would be very disappointed. This film is about isolation, oppression, and dread. It reminded me of Vanessa Ives’ centered episodes of Penny Dreadful, especially the flashbacks to her ‘illness.’
It also brought a childhood fear to life.
I grew up in a museum to better days back in the old country. We were surrounded by ancient furniture and pictures brought from Serbia – including a massive oil painting of a distant relative. A gloomy, stained portrait of a balding Slavic man with wisps of hair over his bald head, dark eyes, and a thick bristle-broom mustache.
No, I haven’t photographed it. The closest I can come to the atmosphere it created is this Rembrandt
Imagine this, but colder, and darker. No beard but the mustache is thick as a nest of sea urchins. The painting infected my dreams. I was four years old and having nightmares about the old man crawling from the cracked oils. He’d pin me down, hot breath on my face, and run his mustache against my naked throat. Sharp as wires, the hairs would slice me open.
Guess what the new Count Orlok has? It’s very Slavic. It’s entirely proper for a man of his time and stature. It also looks just like the one worn by my tormentor. And any time it brushed the naked skin of his suppers – I was small, and vulnerable, and pinned down once again.
Familiar horrors are the ones which dig beyond jump scares or gross-outs. Familiar horrors haunt us. Like the painting. And like this film.
Biomechanoid Blues 