In Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, the dark shadow of a long-fingered hand looms over the fictional German port town of Wisborg. It is a chilling, striking shot: an aerial view of twinkling, snow-dusted houses, the ugly threat of a monster’s grasping hand gliding overhead.
Conjuring atmosphere is something that Eggers, the American horror director behind The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman, is especially good at. His reimagining of the 1922 German silent film by FW Murnau, itself a barely disguised (and distinctly unauthorised) reimagining of Bram Stoker’s 19th-century gothic novel Dracula, isn’t scary exactly: even its moments of gore and grossness are studied and artful. But it is spooky. There is the constant low hum of dread – palpable as Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas Hutter waits for a horse-drawn carriage in the middle of the night, the empty road flanked by trees, snow falling gently as the carriage door slowly swings open.
Content from our partners
