On December 25th, 2024, a film from director Robert Eggers had its official release in the
United States. Nosferatu, another remake of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922),
was Eggers’s greatest success to date, grossing $181.8 million worldwide on a budget of $50 million.
The film received positive responses from critics and audiences, holding a score of 85% from critics on
Rotten Tomatoes has a 75% score from audiences at the time of writing this. Overall, it is safe to say
that this new Nosferatu is well-liked and will remain in the horror zeitgeist for some time, much to my
irritation. I am one of the rare viewers who did not enjoy the movie remotely. I despised the visuals
rendered indecipherable by the amateurishly dark lighting, the design for Orlok, when visible, is
uninspired at best and by far the least frightening Orlok design of all the Nosferatu films, the
performances were both too dramatic, yet not remotely campy (except for Willem Dafoe
and on occasion Aaron Taylor-Johnson) making the characters generic and flat, and of course there’s
the issue of all the verisimilitude rendered moot by the allegedly German characters sounding
incredibly English. However, I’d like to put all of that aside to discuss one glaring flaw of the film that
is far too under-discussed. To put it generously, Nosferatu 2024 is terrified of women’s autonomy and
sexuality.

This film’s interest in women’s sexuality is nothing new. There are several scenes where
leading lady Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) appears to be sexually assaulted by some unseen force and Orlok
(Bill Skarsgård) refers to himself as an “appetite” as he pursues Ellen. Orlok is a very thinly veiled
representation of Ellen’s repressed desires and sexuality. The relationship between Ellen and Orlok is
what I am particularly frustrated by with this film and with its positive reception, because it is their
relationship that forms the film’s basic ideas about women. Looking at the original Nosferatu film from
1922 and the Werner Herzog remake from 1979 (while ignoring any Dracula films because that brings
too many titles to account for) bring to light a clear discrepancy in the portrayal of women. The
Eggers film is the only version in which Ellen is remotely at fault for Orlok’s presence in Germany and the subsequent plague he brings. In the other versions, Orlok travels of his own volition, and any
connections to Ellen are coincidental. In the Eggers film, Ellen, in a fit of desperate loneliness,
psychically contacts and awakens Orlok, effectively summoning him. Thus, every action taken by
Orlok, every murder, every bystander killed by his plague, becomes the fault of Ellen, who summoned
him accidentally, but is nonetheless expected to bear the responsibility of killing Orlok. The statement
is abundantly clear right away: women’s desire leads to the destruction of all.

The Eggers Nosferatu is also the only version where Ellen does not have a choice in sacrificing
herself to kill Orlok. Normally, Ellen learns that the only way to kill Orlok is to have a “pure” woman
lure him in and distract him by letting him drink her blood until sunrise, when the light will kill him
and result in the death of the woman from blood loss as well. Again, this is not subtle. A woman has to
lure Orlok in with the promise that he can penetrate her body all night, there’s an exchange of fluids,
etc. This in itself isn’t necessarily saying great things about women by portraying sexuality as a trap
that will kill the parties involved; however, there is still some power in Ellen making her own decision
about her own body to accomplish something for the good of the whole world, whereas the 2024
remake completely robs Ellen of her autonomy.

Orlok goes to Ellen and demands that she give herself to him. When she refuses, he threatens to kill
everyone she loves, and he starts with Anna (Emma Corrin), one of Ellen’s only friends. Once Ellen
has lost her friend (as well as her friend’s husband and two daughters), her husband Thomas (Nicholas
Hoult) is next in danger, which finally breaks her and causes her to give in to Orlok. Now, this is not
inherently a problem on its own. A film about a woman brought to her breaking point by a monster
assuming entitlement over her because she accidentally called him one time. That could make for an
effective horror story. However, Eggers must have decided that was far too compassionate. Instead,
Orlok repeatedly specifies that Ellen must go to him of her own free will, that whatever he wants with
her can’t happen unless she chooses it. The problem here is that Ellen didn’t choose her own
free will. She was coerced under threat of death for all of her loved ones. The choice is between her own life, her own autonomy, and the life of her husband, along with basically everyone else on the
planet who is dying of a plague. That’s not really a choice. You can’t consent to the things you do
while held at gunpoint. The previous Ellen incarnations realized they could do something to save the
world, and then they did it. This Ellen is told she has to do something, and then she only does it when
she literally has no other options. There’s no autonomy in her death.

My last big concern with the 2024 Nosferatu has to do with the deaths of Anna and her
daughters and what they say about “correct” womanhood. A mother and her children die horrible
deaths at the hands of Orlok, who was brought here by Ellen’s summons. The crazed sexual deviant
brought forth a plague to rid the world of proper women and proper family structures. I can’t help
being concerned by this film’s popularity, given today’s political climate. There was a massive
resurgence of conservative political views in recent years, resulting in Donald Trump being reelected as
president not long before this film came out. As more and more rights are revoked for already
oppressed people, as even the tamest media is censored like it’s the Victorian age, the 2024 Nosferatu
remake caters to the very fear and bigotry that creates this oppression. Robert Eggers presents a world
where one woman’s desire creates an unstoppable monster, leads to countless deaths, and can only be
stopped by torturing, raping, and killing her, all the while telling her she asked for it by having desire.

Perhaps this was not the intent of Robert Eggers with his remake. Based on what interviews
I’ve read that he thinks he did something really feminist here with his age-old story of a woman who is
psychologically tortured and then killed. The film also had an enthusiastic reception from audiences, and that can’t all have come from right-wing viewers, of course. However, misogyny is a problem that
unfortunately transcends political labels, same with any form of bigotry, really, so it doesn’t surprise me
that in an age where censorship is rapidly growing and the rights of the already marginalized are
increasingly revoked, that this film would be lauded as a horrifying story. I just doubt people realize
what this film truly wants them to fear.