'Nosferatu' Reviews: Does Bill Skarsgård's Vampire Thriller Have Bite?

Lily-Rose Depp in "Nosferatu."

Nosferatu—Robert Eggers’ Gothic horror thriller starring Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult—is new in theaters. Are critics entranced by the new Gothic horror film?

A remake of director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 horror film classic starring Max Schreck, Nosferatu opens in theaters on Christmas Day.

The official logline for the film reads, “A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.”

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Skarsgård stars as the title character, aka Count Orlok. The decrepit vampire is obsessed with Ellen Hutter (Depp), the wife of Thomas Hutter (Hoult), a real estate agent sent to Transylvania to find a new estate for Orlok.

Rated R, Nosferatu also stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Simon McBurney, Ralph Ineson and Willem Dafoe.

Directed by Eggers, Nosferatu is based on the filmmaker’s screenplay, which is inspired by the original Nosferatu script by Henrik Galeen and Bram Stoker’s legendary novel Dracula.

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Nosferatu currently has an 86% “fresh” rating on the critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes based on 180 reviews.

The RT Critics Consensus for the film reads, “Marvelously orchestrated by director Robert Eggers, Nosferatu is a behemoth of a horror film that is equal parts repulsive and seductive.”

In addition, Nosferatu currently has an 81% “fresh” rating on the RT’s Popcornmeter based on 100-plus reviews.

David Fear is among the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes who give Nosferatu a “fresh rating.

In his review for Rolling Stone, Fear writes, “You may not have asked for a new version of this near-perfect silent-film classic. You also couldn’t ask for a better artist to give this generation of Goths a nightmare to call their own.”

Nick Schager also gives Nosferatu a “fresh review on RT, writing, “A monument to dark desire and the corruption it breeds, and a masterpiece of unholy terror that instantly takes its place alongside the genre’s hallowed greats.”

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Also, in his “fresh” review on RT, BBC critic Nicholas Barber writes, “What really separates Eggers' Nosferatu from the flock is how deeply it explores the images and themes of vampire lore. There aren't many Dracula films that give you so much to sink your teeth into.”

Richard Brody of The New Yorker is among the top RT critics who give the film a “rotten” review, writing, “The very coherence of his Nosferatu is what makes it drag. The images aren’t only stripped of superfluities; they’re hermetically sealed off from anything that could impinge from offscreen ... They feel designed, deadeningly, to mean just one thing.”

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Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair also gives Nosferatu a “rotten” review on RT, writing, “Nothing is particularly scary, because most of the movie’s humanity is drowned out by the relentless churn of Eggers’s visual and aural mood.”

Another RT critic dulling the fangs of Nosferatu is Katie Walsh, who writes in her review for the Tribune News Service, “An overly faithful retelling, so indebted to its inspiration that it's utterly hamstrung by its own reverence. If Shadow of the Vampire is a playful spin, Eggers' Nosferatu is an utterly straight-faced and interminably dull retread”

Rated R, Nosferatu opens in theaters on Christmas Day.

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