I went and watched Robert Eggers' Nosferatu the other night. I never really grew up watching horror films, and to this day, I still don't really enjoy them. The horror genre feels very woman-coded and in the same vein as reading period-piece smut novels featuring vaguely consensual sexual slavery, true crime podcasts about serial child murderers, and YouTube shorts of surgical procedures. Nosferatu manages to touch on all those cornerstones of the woman-brained entertainment nexus. So obviously—it's been a box office hit!
I have never read Bram Stoker's Dracula. I've never seen the original 1920s silent movie Nosferatu. I enjoyed Eggers' other films and knew that I would, at the very least, enjoy the realism and slow-burning imagery that are trademarks of his style. The only other movies I've seen recently are Gladiator 2 and Megalopolis—movies made by preachy American octogenarians whose milquetoast values and messages are so predictable and obvious that they ruined both films. In contrast, Eggers, in Nosferatu, either completely removes his personal views to stay true to the source material, or more interestingly, incorporates what could be considered dangerous ideas into the film.
One of the things hammered into me as a child was an idea called Cultural Discernment, which is used by Christian evangelicals to reframe secular culture within biblical teachings. Mostly, it's used as a way to keep enjoying the same movies, music, and video games everyone else does, so long as none of them flaunt secular values too much. Technically, though, it's not that different from the approach most other functioning ideologies have when it comes to engaging with global monoculture. Deconstruction is the more formalized version cooked up by the thinky bois; the left-wingers have Critical Consciousness, and the right-wingers have things like "noticing" or "red-pilling".
Nosferatu is a discernment gold mine. What is the message the story is trying to tell? For a bit of background: The movie follows Ellen, a happily newlywed bride, and her husband Thomas, living in the German town of Wisburg. Thomas is sent to Transylvania as part of his job to negotiate the sale of a large estate with the mysterious Count Orlok. Little does Thomas know that Count Orlok has been vying to steal Ellen from him. Orlok puts Thomas under his spell and tricks him into signing a marriage annulment with Ellen. Thomas narrowly escapes Count Orlok and returns home to a distraught Ellen, who's been haunted by Orlok in her dreams. But Orlok has followed Thomas home and has brought the plague along with him to Wisburg. Orlok gives Ellen an ultimatum: either she marries and sleeps with him, or he will kill everyone in the town. After much death and suffering, Ellen eventually marries Orlok and sacrifices her own life to kill the vampire.
Whew, okay—so right off the top of my head, I'm thinking that there are a few messages:
- International finance and the pursuit of money are the roots of evil?
- Immigration causes the death of community?
- Women pay the brunt of the cost for evil? Their fears are often ignored as hysterics?
As someone who really only dabbles in the horror genre, it does seem that the genre gives the viewer license to indulge in what kinda feels like right-wing voyeurism. Anecdotally, most of the people I know who enjoy horror are more lefty, and the conservatives I know almost unanimously avoid all horror movies. Or maybe it's more meta—everyone watching these films recognizes the wink-wink, nudge-nudge caricature that's happening?
Standing Before Me Was Death, But I'd Never Been So Happy
There's a scene that made me feel like it was even talking about this voyeurism. Ellen has dreams of all these horrible things happening, and she seems to be enjoying them?
Anyways, Nosferatu is a good watch—at the very least, it will make you think.
