Robert Eggers' adaptation of "Nosferatu" was on the making since around 2016 until 2023, yet the director' passion for the story is far older, going back to his childhood: "I was really into the film as a kid. I saw a picture of Max Schreck in a book on vampires when I was like nine, and I tracked down the VHS with the help of my mom. I was really obsessed with it. I loved "Dracula" as well, and Bela Lugosi, and Francis Ford Coppola version, and Christopher Lee. But there was something about the haunting quality of "Nosferatu" and the simple fairytale of it, the enigma of "Nosferatu", that was the most attractive to me."
Robert Eggers as Count Orlok on his on his own theatre production of “Nosferatu” (2001), alongside Ashley Kelly-Tata. Photography: Sarah Low
“Nosferatu” (2024) official poster. Design by AV Print
© 2024 Focus Features
At the surface, the story is a simple dark fairytale, but it's mostly a rich tapestry of references, sometimes overlapping, and conflicting. even. The director has called it his "most personal film. A story, not engendered by me, but one that I have lived with, within, and dreamed about since childhood." As such, his protagonist, Ellen, shares the same obsession.
This is not a one-time experience; it's a story that invites the viewer to revisit it, to dig deeper and to linger, to become as obsessed and passionate as its creator. As Professor Von Franz and Dr. Sievers quote Mathew 7:6 to each other: "do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces". Count Orlok, as the titular Nosferatu, is compelled to dwell in the shadows until the final scene when the curse is, at last, broken; and it's also in the shadows, the background, the visual and audio storytelling, the answers to the "enigma of Nosferatu" lie, beneath the melodrama and farse of early 19th century Victorian society. As Production designer Craig Lathrop has teased: "the devil is in the details", and everything tells the story. This is a highly cinematic narrative, a visual feast, and not merely for aesthetic purposes. A similar invitation was shared by Robert Eggers: "In general, though, we’re hoping that our influences get broken down through some kind of alchemical process and become something else, even if you can smell them and are aware of them."
The first script of Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu" dates back to 2016 (and is available online), at the surface it reads as very similar to the final 2024 version, yet, some major changes have been made. Neverthelness, when asked about the two versions of his story, Robert Eggers said his intentions have not changed: "The intention of what I was trying to do did not really change, but my ability to execute [that vision] changed a lot — due to the clout, as you say, to do the film my way, and also in terms of having a better technical ability to communicate [and achieve] what was in my imagination. That wouldn’t have been the case if I’d done the film 10 years ago".
To IndieWire, the director revealed after the first draft, he wrote a "not-well written" novella of the characters' backstories: "[The script] hasn’t deviated a tremendous amount since then,” he said. “It’s gotten leaner and better. I wrote a novella in the process of figuring out what the script [would] be, but also scenes that I knew would never be in the film, but would make it so that I could understand what was new that I was bringing to this and why it needed to be made." An idea Eggers would repeat to Gizmodo: "You know, my intentions have not really changed once I wrote that novella and once I broke that script. The script has gotten tighter and just more honed, but my “vision” for what the movie would be has not changed. But I’m glad it took a long time. I’ve grown a lot as a person, certainly as a filmmaker. My collaborations with my creative head of departments have become even more fluid and we’re more extensions of each other. And also I ended up with this completely fantastic cast." The main colaborators started working in preparation of the film, around that time, as well.
To Robert Eggers, the major changes to the 2016 script were: "mostly shaving exposition down, [finding out] how much money we’re gonna have for the boat sequence, should it be bigger, should it be smaller, do we get rid of it altogether, things like that. But I think when I knew that it was gonna be Ellen’s story, that she was gonna be the central protagonist, and I knew that Orlok was gonna be a folk vampire, and Von Franz—the Van Helsing character—was gonna be much more prominent than he is in the Murnau or Herzog versions, and the Harding family dynamics, their progression, I knew what the movie was. Then it was just about getting it right."
Speaking of his primary "Dracula" influences, Robert Eggers has shared: "I watched the [Werner] Herzog movie a ton as a teenager, and it’s impossible to not notice that it influenced my film. However, in the 10-ish years that I’ve spent trying to make this movie I’ve avoided the Herzog film. I also watched Coppola’s Dracula movie a lot as a kid. But never in the past 10 years. We did deliberately reference the Tod Browning Dracula a couple times. And I did go back to Bram Stoker’s book".
Christopher Lee as Count Dracula: Jesús Franco, "Count Dracula", 1970
About the German director's reaction to his re-telling, Eggers went on record saying: "I imagine [Werner] Herzog would hate my movie, and it would be against his brand to like it. I hope he detests it. I’m a massive Herzog fan and, you know, I’m really in love with his works but I think, of course, we have [Klaus] Kinski beautiful, tragic, introspective, sad vampire, and the movies that were more influencial to this movie, aside from “Nosferatu” were not Dracula movies. I watched the Herzog version a lot as a young person, so in the 10 years of trying to make this I deliberately didn’t watch them. I know that those influences are there […] because I watched those movies a zillion times when I was younger […] I did not watch the Herzog nor the Coppola movie in the 10 years of trying to make “Nosferatu”. That said I watched them 40 billion times growing up, so they had their impact, it’s undeniable on the film, and I know there are choices I made that I would not have made had I not seen Herzog movie so many times but I definitely think we […] were after a different beast to some degree, maybe to larger degree.”
Werner Herzog, "Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht", 1979
Concerning the "Dracula" novel, Robert Eggers never concealed he has no great love for it's author, Bram Stoker: "I read Dracula very closely three times. But I honestly think the idea of Dracula and what Dracula has spawned and inspired is better than the novel. Stoker is not the greatest writer. Sorry." Yet, he gives Stoker his flowers as "he knew that the female protagonist needed to be expanded", and, as such, his version it's Ellen's from the start. "It took a repressed Victorian hack, sorry,” he said of Stoker, “to accidentally create this incredible fucking story of Dracula". Neverthleness, as the studio script states, "Nosferatu" (2024) is also an adaptation of the novel, as it is of the 1922 Murnau film. The director also revealed how: "I had to forget everything that I had learned. I read ‘Dracula’ at least five times as a young person, and then realized that I had infused it with things from vampire movies that aren’t in the book, [that] I thought were there."
This is an idea the director would return on his own essay to "The Hollywood Reporter": "When I picked up Dracula again about 10 years ago to begin my screenplay of Nosferatu, I realized that truly reading Stoker’s text was going to be an act of forgetting — of unlearning. As I have made clear from my own experiences, in the century-plus since the publication of the novel, the cinematic vampire has had a profound impact on the themes and motifs of the undead and of Dracula; I realized that, as a young person reading the book, I had been synthesizing the film adaptations and infusing the book with mythology and story points that simply weren’t there."
Comparing it to the "Dracula" novel, the director said: "In some ways, the stakes are lower than Stoker's, because Stoker’s Dracula is moving to England to kind of take over the world. Here, Orlok is entirely just focused on Lily-Rose Depp’s character, but he leaves a whole lot of destruction in his path in order to get what he wants. I mean in Stoker, like Lucy and Mina just happened to be convenient necks that are in Whitby, and Lucy, like Ellen is a somnambulist. And in the 19th century it was believed that sleepwalkers had either an innate or easier susceptibility to things in another realm. So she becomes first on the hit list and then he just moves on to Mina. But when you do a version like the Jack Palance version or the Coppola version where Mina is this figure of love and desire that’s beyond anything, you kind of wonder why the hell does he go after Lucy first then? And here it’s all about Ellen and destroying the things, the people that she loves is a way for him to exert more control and terror over her." This Count Orlok, like the folk vampire, is a representation of death and disease, above all.
In his own essays, both to the "Guardian" and to "The Hollywood Reporter", Robert Eggers leaves a meditative question about the strigoi myth, who returns to haunt their living relatives: "What is the dark trauma that even death cannot erase? A heartbreaking notion. This is the essence of the palpable belief in the vampire. The folk vampire is not a suave dinner-jacket-wearing seducer, nor a sparkling, brooding hero. The folk vampire embodies disease, death and sex in a base, brutal, and unforgiving way. This is a very different vampire from Stoker’s. Yet Stoker harnessed the same power of sex and death in an approachable tale of a demon lover and the clash of modern and medieval."
And, now, as Robert Eggers, Craig Lathrop and David White have challenged, I invite the reader to immerse themselves and dig deeper into the "alchemist process" of transforming this seemingly bleak fairytale, into something else.
The Prologue
The prologue of Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu" is unique to his version of this tale, as it finds no parallel in the previous adaptations, where Ellen/Lucy only makes "contact" with Count Orlok/Dracula when he's about to feed on Thomas/Jonathan and she is able to stop him from afar, after crying out for her husband.
Tod Browning's "Dracula" (1931) opens its credits with Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovski's "Swan Lake" (Ballet Suite), Op. 20: I. Scene (Swan Theme). Considered the most popular ballet worldwide, it tells the story of Princess Odette who gets transformed into a swan by the evil sorcerer Rothbart, and only true love can break the spell. While not a part of the original ballet, several companies throughout the years include a prologue of Odette's first encounter with Rothbart and her transformation into a swan. This might have been Robert Eggers' inspiration for his prologue.
"Black Swan" (2010) Prologue: Nina dreams of dancing "Swan Lake" prologue
In the critically acclaimed Darren Aronofsky's psychological horror film "Black Swan" (2010), the prologue features a dream sequence of the innocent and child-like protagonist, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), as she pictures herself dancing Odette, and her first encounter with Rothbart, getting cursed into becoming a swan. Although, this film is not named amongst the "official" inspirations for Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu", the story also deals with Carl Jung's integration of shadow theory, as the dancer Nina spirals down and embraces her own darkness to be able to dance both the White and the Black Swan, in her obsessive and self-destructive pursuit for perfection. At the end, she dies, satisfied for having achieved what she always wanted.
In the 2024 retelling of "Nosferatu", Ellen encounters Count Orlok during her teenage years. She is fifteen years old (as revealed by Robert Eggers and composer Robin Carolan), yet she is on her childhood bedroom, and these years are called "childhood" throughout the narrative. The concept of "teenager" did not exist in the 19th century; one would go from childhood into adulthood with no phase in-between, and the notion of "adolescence" was only created in the 20th century, mostly after World War II. As such, Ellen is refered to as a "child" even though she's in what, nowadays, would be consider her teen years. Yet, this child-like innocence is important to the narrative, as we'll see.
For his own adaptation of "Nosferatu", Robert Eggers wrote a novella with backstories of every character because he wanted to make this re-telling his own: “I’m always sifting through ideas during my ‘notes’ phase, but I felt I needed to grapple with some big things. Albin Grau, the [original film’s] producer and production designer, was a practicing occultist, who I think actually believed in vampires — or psychic vampires, anyways. So, I was trying to understand what he was thinking about, and how that would have influenced the story. I also wanted to figure out what our Van Helsing character, von Franz, might have been thinking during his time period, with his understanding of hysteria and medicine. Plus, [I was examining] the folklore on Transylvanian vampires of the period and wondering how to create a mythology consistent with all of that stuff. Most importantly, I was thinking, ‘Who are these characters, and how can I build out their backstories and make them real people?’ I also wanted our version to be Ellen’s story. The previous Nosferatu films start out as Thomas Hutter’s story, or Jonathan Harker’s, and then become Ellen’s story, but I wanted it to always be her story. Our film’s prologue comes from the work I did with the novella."
"Psychic vampires" (also known as energetic vampires) will be mentioned, again, by Robert Eggers: "With this movie, one of my guiding principles was, “What were the original filmmaker’s intentions?” I’m not making the same movie as them, but what were they thinking about and what were they inspired by? Albin Grau, the producer and production designer of Nosferatu, was a practising occultist and I think he believed that psychic vampires were real. He talks about folk vampires in press. That feels sensational, but I would be surprised if he didn’t believe in psychic vampires who could torment people in astral form. What was his thinking as an early 20th-century occultist? What would Von Franz [Van Helsing]’s occult views be like in the 1830s? What are the folk superstitions in Transylvania, and then how do I synthesize them into a cohesive mythos?"
In a different interview, Robert Eggers also explained his understanding of “psychic vampires” (which is the accepted definition): “People who can, or potentially elemental spirits who can send their astral bodies psychically to drain people of energy”.
I. Ellen's Backstory
At the prologue of "Nosferatu", it all begins with a music box playing, and then a girl crying in despair and sadness. According to composer Robin Carolan, the music box is meant to convey the idea of a Gothic fairytale and innocence being corrupted. Like the narrative of the film comes full circle, so does the score, as "the very last scene in the film is a variation in the music box theme".
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Teenage Ellen in her childhood bedroom("Nosferatu" (2024) - Making Of | Behind The Scenes (Special Effects | Set Visit | Make-up | Visual Effects)
Aside from childhood evocative items meant to covey innocence (the toys and dollhouse, for instance), there are other objects here that speak of Ellen's backstory. In this behind-the-scene footage, next to her bed, there's a prayer kneeler bench and a crucifix on the wall. In an interview, Emma Corrin, when discussing the novella Robert Eggers gave to them, revealed a bit of their character, Anna Harding’s backstory: "I remember mine saying that she was Lutheran from a conservative household." This seems to be Ellen's case, as well.
"I know I deserve all shame and misery in this life, and everlasting hell-fire. But I beg thee, for the sake of thy Son. Forgive me. Show me mercy. Show me thy light."
Ellen begins her prayer, but she's not in her prayer kneeler bench, nor is she praying to God. As Production designer Craig Lathrop elaborates: "[Like in] the opening shot. Ellen is sitting up in her bed, calling to an unknown spirit." This seems to indicate there is some sort of disconnection between Ellen and the Christian faith present in her bedroom. As she'll reveal later to both Professor Von Franz and Thomas, she is seeking comfort, tenderness and company, because she was "so very lonely" and her touch began to frighten her father.
Fans of Robert Eggers will notice the resemblance with "The VVitch" (2015) and Thomasin relationship with her father, and how her mother started to resent her as she was growing into a young woman and was "too old" to give her father any sort of physical affection, or even help him undress his soiled clothes (which will culminate with her mother's hatred towards her, and think of her as a witch who cursed her entire family).
"The VVitch", 2015
As Ellen will reveal later to Professor Von Franz during their first meeting, her mother had already passed away, years prior. However, she seemily had "these spells" (somnambulism) before her mother's death, as she confirms to the Professor ("Dr. Sievers tells me you have had these
spells since childhood?"): "I cannot always remember them. As if my spirit wanders off. Sometimes it was... it is like a dream." In Medicine, "spells" don't equal "magic spells", “spells” are a sudden onset of a symptom or symptoms that are stereotypic, self-limited, and recurrent.
This is a reference to the "Dracula" novel, where Lucy Westenra has also been a somnambulist since childhood (which she inherited from her father), yet her sleepwalking returns when Count Dracula is on his way to Whitby: "Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night. Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place. Poor dear, she is naturally anxious about Lucy, and she tells me that her husband, Lucy's father, had the same habit, that he would get up in the night and dress himself and go out, if he were not stopped."
Ellen reveals to the Professor to have premonitions ever since infancy, as well ("I know things"), and it goes from small things ("I always knew the contents of my Christmas gifts"), to almost prophecy-like: "I knew when... that my mother would pass". When Ellen says this, the viewer has already seen her displaying this sort of ability, right after the prologue, when she perceives Herr Knock will send Thomas away.
"Father... he would find me in our fields... within the forest... as if – I was his little changeling girl."
Then, Ellen mentions her love for nature, and remembers being in the fields and within the forest with great nostalgia (in contrast to her current domestic sphere and medicalized existence). This also provides the context for her wanting to go to the beach; in a scene that didn't make it to domestic release, but it's in the script and was a part of the European Theatrical Cut, Ellen is the one who begs Anna Harding for them to go to the beach, alongside the children.
Ellen's father also compared her to a "changeling". According to folklorist D. L. Ashliman on his essay “Changelings”, these are human-like creatures from European folklore (Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain, and Ireland). They are children kidnapped by fairies, elves or demons and a substitute child being left in their place: “many people have sincerely and actively believed that supernatural beings can and do exchange their own inferior offspring for human children, making such trades either in order to breed new strength and vitality into their own diminutive races or simply to plague humankind.”
Ellen remembers being called “changeling” by her father, fondly, because she enjoyed being in nature when she was meant to be indoors, but this doesn’t have positive connotations in European folklore, since these legends were used to justified the beating and murder of children, because the parents didn’t believe the child was theirs, and their “rightful child” would be returned to them if they mistreated the “supernatural offspring”. This might be connected with Robert Eggers saying Ellen does not have the "language" to understand herself, and her as a victim of 19th century.
In the 19th century, this was still a living superstition in several European countries. Even in the 1920s, in rural Germany “many people were still taking traditional precautions against the demonic exchange of infants”. In the 16th century, German priest Martin Luther believed a changeling “was a child of the devil without a human soul, only a piece of flesh”. Luther himself had no reservations about putting such children to death. Changelings did not developed as other children, either physically (usually more sickly or smaller than others, or with some disability), mentally or behaviorally. They either didn’t mature nor died (in spite of their “ill nature”), and remained helplessly dependent and insatiably hungry for a very long time. They were known for their ravenous appetite, and were considered omens of poverty and financial problems.
"Devil! You have their blood upon
thy hands! It is you. It is you. The Devil is in thee and hath had
thee. You are smeared of his sin.
You reek of Evil. You have made a
covenant with death! You bewitched thy brother, proud
slut! Did you not think I saw thy sluttish looks to him, bewitching his eye as any whore? And thy father next! You took them from me! They are
gone! You killed my children! Witch! Witch!"
This reveals much about how Ellen's father saw her, and it seems to find parallel with Thomasin's mother, in the way, they both saw their children as bad omens, troublesome and with some evil within. Ellen adds "as I became older it worsened... Father dispraised me for it..." As she was growing older, in early 19th century society, it was not suitable for a young woman to spend time outdoors, since women belonged to the domestic sphere ("cult of domesticity"), as the viewer sees in the gender segregation in the Hardings household; men smoking and drinking in the “smoking room” and women and children in the parlour room.
And this is the context that leads teenage Ellen to call out, with tears on her eyes.
II. Conjuring Count Orlok
Robert Eggers described his Ellen’s psychic abilities as the cause for her ostracism among her 19th century peers in her adulthood: “She's an outsider. She has this understanding about the shadow side of life that is very deep, but she doesn't have language for that. She's totally misunderstood and no one can see her," he says. "Because of this gift, in her teenage years, she ends up reaching out to this demon lover, this vampire, who is the one being who can connect with that side of her. But then that other, sensual, erotic world is connected to this evil force, which only increases her shame.”
“Come to me. Come to me. A guardian angel, a spirit of comfort – spirit of any celestial sphere – anything – hear my call. Come to me.”
In the spirit of horror, this scene is presented as very eerie and Ellen’s prayer seems arbitrary, and made out of desperation. Not so. This prayer tells the viewer there is something more about this character because she should not have the knowledge she's displaying here.
Ellen is attempting to communicate with angels, which is connected to the Enochian magic system by Dr. John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelly, and the Enochian language they are said to have received from angels. Enochian symbols appear throughout the film in connection with Count Orlok and Herr Knock correspondence, rituals and the Solomonari codex of secrets.
In Christian faith, the “spirit of comfort” is the Holy Ghost, considered the divine comforter, offering consolation, guidance and strenght during hard times. Yet, the context of this scene tells the viewer this is not what Ellen is calling for. In occult tradition, the term it’s sometimes associated with Spirit Guides (angels, ascended masters, deities, and deceased ancestors). The “celestial spheres” are a concept associated with Hermeticism, where it’s believed one has to travel through the celestial spheres of the Sun, Moon and the planets to reach God. It’s connected to the ascend and descend of the soul.
The choice of words for Ellen’s prayer, and the context of asking for tenderness, is reminiscent of the “Dracula” novel, when Vampire Lucy calls out for her fiancé Sir Arthur Holmwood: "Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!" There was something diabolically sweet in her tones, something of the tinkling of glass when struck, which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell, moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix.”
“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you, my darling. Kiss me, and caress me, my darling husband, please…”
Vampire Lucy Westenra in Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula", 1992
Count Orlok was already
cursed into being a strigoi due to the
"Faustian bargain" he made in the late 16th century. Yet, instead of spreading death and disease, he
made the decision of lock himself in his sarcophagus and go into deep slumber. It's Ellen who causes him to stir from his grave, like he'll reveal later on, because
she is his affliction. This is also connected to the folklore which inspired his character, because the folk vampire, unlike the Anglo literary vampire, doesn't target random people.
"You."
"[he is come to Wisburg... for you]. I know. I know him. I have brought this evil upon us. I have never shared my secret with any soul. I sought company, I sought tenderness, and I called out.."
As Robert Eggers elaborates: "In ‘Dracula,’ Lugosi is going to London for, I don’t know, world domination. In ‘Nosferatu’ the count is coming to Wisborg explicitly for her,” as a script line where he [Robert Eggers]
insists “You have awakened me from an eternity of darkness” makes clear." As Herr Knock bitterly says, near the end: "
he cares only for his pretty bride, and she is his".
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"O’er centuries, a loathsome beast I lay within the darkest pit... ‘til you did wake me, enchantress, and stirred me from my grave. You are my affliction."
While this wasn't the case with the 2016 script (where the prologue belonged to Herr Knock), Robert Eggers ultimately decided his version of "Nosferatu" would be "[Ellen's] story from the very beginning. When you look at the Murnau film, you see that there was this demon-lover relationship that I got to explore much further," Eggers says. "They're together, he disappears, and then he returns to destroy her, but it is also a love triangle. She has this loving relationship with her husband, but it doesn't have the passion that she has with this demon."
Count Orlok returns to destroy Ellen, right at the prologue, as he tells her she's not for the living, "you are not for human kind", and asks her to swear herself to him, to be one with him, forever. And, when she does, in a garden of lilacs of her family manor, he'll try to collect what was promised to him.
Ellen did not give him entrance into her home, and, instead, went outside, which establishes the connection of Count Orlok and thematic "nature" in the narrative, and will come into play later when she gives him entrance into the Harding household, unaware she's dooming everyone inside, which tells the viewer what Thomas Hutter will expose in the dialogue: it's impossible for Ellen and Count Orlok to have been "lovers"... in the 19th century.
"Your fate is set and you cannot escape it": Ellen ("Nosferatu", 2024) and Amleth ("The Northman", 2022)
As Robert Eggers has explained, "it was clear to me that I needed to return to the source, to the early folkloric vampire, to written accounts about or by people who believed that vampires existed – and who were terrified of them. Most of these early accounts come from Balkan and Slavic regions. Many are from Romania, where Stoker’s Dracula resides." In order to achieve what he was after, the director revealed "[While] trying to understand the origins of the vampire myth and understanding folk vampires, I had to forget everything that I had learned [about vampires]".
Romanian poet and screenwriter Florin Lăzărescu worked as the consultant and researcher on 19th-century Transylvania, Romanian folklore and dialects (Romanian, Romani and the reconstruted Dacian Count Orlok uses for his incantations). As Robert Eggers has said, the "myth" surrounding his Count Orlok is Transylvanian folklore: "One of the tasks I had was synthesizing Grau’s 20th-century occultism with cult understandings of the 1830s and with the Transylvanian folklore that was my guiding principle for how Orlok was going to be, what things he was going to do, and the mythology around him. I was synthesizing a mythology that worked with all of that."
Robert Eggers adapted the "psychic vampires who could torment people in astral form", and this comes from both Romanian folklore of the "moroi", and Germanic and Slavic folklore of the "nachzehrer" (also known as "shroud eater") is a sort of vampire who devours its burial shroud and body, and spreads disease. According to historian Thomas M. Bohn on his "The Vampire: Origins of a European Myth", the nachzehrer is “allegelly active deceased persons who, whilst they remain in their graves and can only be identified through a widely audible chewing sound on their funeral shrouds, do neverthelness threaten their relatives with serious diseases in a telephatic manner”.
The nachzehrer doesn't need to leave its grave; it’s a psychic vampire, who feeds off life force (soul), and spreads disease. Reports about them were common during periods of plague, such as epidemics. The belief in such creatures reached its peak in the 17th century, in historical Eastern Germany and neighbouring Slavic lands. The term nachzehrer originated from a combination of “Verzehrer des Leichentuchs” (“one who devours his shroud") and “Nachholer von Angehörigen” (“one who comes back from the grave to claim his relatives”).
According to the “Dictionary of German Superstitions” (1987) by Bächtold Stäubli, Hanns Hoffmann and Krayer Eduard, the nachzehrer targeted their relatives with the purpose of dragging them to an early grave. The nachzehrer haunting is believed to be connected with its desire for life, or the bond it shared with its loved ones. This belief, comes from the idea of “shared death” (present all over Central and Eastern Europe); when there’s a death in the family, others might soon follow (usually three) either because funeral rites were not respected or the dead doesn’t want to go alone to the Afterlife.
This is similar to the Romanian "strigoi", as Montague Summers (“The Vampire in Europe: True Tales of the Undead”), Agnes Murgoçi and Jan Louis Perkowski (“The Vampire: A Casebook”) write that the victims of strigoi haunting are their family members and loved ones: “in Roumania as in Greece and other lands the vampire first attacks his own household and even the animals belonging to his family”. When a strigoi rises from the grave, it’s not usual to return to their living activities: “He comes back in the night and speaks with the family. He may eat what he finds in dishes and knock things about, or he may help with the housework and cut wood. Female vampires also come back to their children.”
Death and disease will soon follow, since the strigoi ultimate goal is to drag its relatives to their early graves, as well: “However, whether he be busily helpful or whether he prove a bane all the inhabitants will quickly die off, and even the cattle will fall victims to some strange disease.” As Montague Summers writes: “the vampire who is supposed when he returns from his grave first to attack those who on earth have been his nearest and dearest”. One of the most popular themes in Romanian folklore, it’s the strigoi lover, where the reanimated-corpse type may have the attributes of a lover, as Agnes Murgoçi writes: “the vampire comes to fetch his [living] lady love, and takes her with him to his tomb”. Robert Eggers also talked about the folk vampire who takes his widow with him to the grave, but what he speaks of is more connected to the end of the film.
III. Sex and Death
At the prologue, as the folk vampire, Count Orlok infects his widow with disease: sexual desire, as she experiences sexual awakening by his presence. Lily-Rose Depp has described it as such, when she named one of the materials Robert Eggers gave her in preparation for the role: "He [Robert Eggers] also gave me this text to read, which is called ‘Péhor’ [by Remy de Gourmont], and it’s kind of like a story about a young religious girl who has a sexual awakening love story with a demon. So, of course, that was quite pertinent for me. I used that kind of like a Bible and found myself reading it again and again as we were shooting.”
The concept of female sexuality as disease is connected to both Victorian views of female sexuality, and 1970 and 1980's Feminist literary critic analyses of the "Dracula" novel, which Robert Eggers has revealed to be amongst his sources for his re-telling of "Nosferatu". This has been widely studied by several authors like Pamela Gilbert (“Disease, Desire and the Body in Victorian Women's Popular Novels”), Beth Shane (“"Your Girls That You All Love Are Mine Already": Criminal Female Sexuality In Bram Stoker's Dracula”), Phyllis A. Roth (“Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula”), Andrew Smith (“Victorian Demons: Medicine, Masculinity and the Gothic at the Fin de Siècle”), Ardel Haetele-Thomas (“Queer Others in Victorian Gothic: Transgressing Monstrosity”), Mary Hallab (“Vampires and Medical Science”), among others.
The paralllel between vampirism and sexual desire has been analysed by several authors over the years, with focus on queerness or female sexuality. To many authors, “Dracula” is a metaphor for Victorian anxieties about sexuality, gender, and social boundaries, and the homoerotic subtext (mostly in the interactions between Count Dracula and Jonathan Harker) has been widely studied, and is an accepted academic interpretation of the work. Phyllis A. Roth (“Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula”) argues that in the “Dracula” novel “vampirism . . . is equivalent to sexuality”, and that its “central anxiety’ is “the fear of the devouring woman”. This author focuses on the parallel between vampirism and sexuality during a time when female sexuality was changing and many did not know how to respond.
Charlotte Luke, on her essay “Sexuality as Disease in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla”, writes about the physical figure of the "sick woman" as one of the principal ways in which female sexuality manifests as a contagious disease. In the “Dracula” novel, this is embodied in Lucy Westenra and her degeneration into vampirism: “Stoker alludes to discourses surrounding male attitudes towards women’s illness, and how they are shaped by theories about the spread of infection. In particular, the metaphor serves to align Lucy’s symptoms with women’s sexual desire and liberation.”
At the beginning of 19th century, Historian Hera Cook (“The Long Sexual Revolution - English Women, Sex and Contraception 1800-1975”) speaks of the growing trend in prescriptive literature on female sexuality, a reaction to control women's growing sexual activity. In this context, William Rathbone Greg, in the 1800s, argued “in men... the sexual desire is inherent and spontaneous... In the other sex, the desire is dormant, if not non-existent. If the passions of women were ready, strong and spontaneous, in a degree even approaching the form they assume in the coarser sex, there can be little doubt that sexual irregularities would reach a height, of which, at present, we have happily no conception.”
This statement, more than an exercise of control on female sexuality, also exposed the moral panic surrounding it, especially by the Middle-class and Medicine. As Véronique Molinari essays on her "“Fearing the passions of women. Female desire and sexuality in the nineteenth century”, female sexuality was seen as a plague and a monstrosity in need of containment, which is what many feminist critics see in “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, and the thesis Robert Eggers adapted. In the early 19th century, women were believed to have no sexual desire, whatsoever: "according to a great number of practitioners, sexual desire was entirely unknown to the virtuous woman". In his “Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs”, gynecologist William Acton, and a strong opponent of masturbation, writes: “the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind”.
And if women displayed sexual desire, there was something evil and demonic about them, or, as Ellen puts it, using a reference from the “Dracula” novel: “unclean”. As Véronique Molinari writes: "Female desire was thus pathologised, and depicted as dangerous or deviant, potentially leading to physical and mental disorders. One of them was the notable “female hysteria”, but other “female nervous diseases”, notably epilepsy, and insanity, were also traced to women’s uterus or clitoris, whose stimulation, as part of masturbation, was thought to be harmful."
Infected with sexual desire by the folk vampire, Ellen starts to masturbate. In the prologue of the 2016 script, there was also a masturbation scene with Herr Knock to conjure Count Orlok, here it was given to Ellen. She will mention this to Professor Von Franz during their first conversation: “At last, Papa found me laying... unclothed, I was... my body... my flesh... my... Sin, sin, he said... He would have sent me to that place... I shan’t go... I –”
In her adult years, Ellen is a diagnosed "Hysteric", and, as mentioned above, in the early 19th century, one of the major culprits for Hysteria among girls was masturbation. To Professor Von Franz, she also mentions "epilepsies" during her teenage years (while her Hysteria is called "hysterical spells" in the narrative), and, during this time period, masturbation was seen as a form of “epilepsy”, insanity (“lunacy”) and “anti-social behavior”. Called “self-pollution” and “self-abuse”, was perceived as both a moral and physical evil. Medical manuals adverted against this “sin”, for both men and women. In girls, the “treatment” could go from changes in diet, exercise, clitoral removal to institutionalization in asylums, which is what Ellen's father threatened her with, when he found her masturbating.
In the 2024 version it's also sexual energy that conjures Count Orlok for telepathic communication to happen (as seen, later, by Herr Knock's ritual, which comes directly from the 2016 script). As Robert Eggers has explained, Orlok is able to astral project himself like a ghost (or a shadow). And he appears, here, to grab Ellen by the neck, and suffocate her.
"At first it was sweet, I had never known such bliss. Yet it turned to torture, it would kill me."
"I can’t breathe!"
"Such nightmares... a shadow pressing... my body sinking... sinking... The smell of rancid meat... Suffocating... I... feel so weak... I..."
Ellen swore to be one with Count Orlok, ever-eternally, and he, indeed, appears to collect her soul, because he, like the folk vampire, feeds on life force. Robert Eggers used a combination of both him strangling his victims and feeding on their heart's blood (where the soul is), but he can only feed on the heart while physically present. From afar, the viewer sees him employing this method of folk vampirism.
Ellen is convulsing, similiar to her ecstatic trances, and while this is a symbolic awakening of her power, in religious language, "ecstasy" is not connected to sexual pleasure. As Mircea Eliade explains on his "Zalmoxis: The Vanishing God", ecstasy is "considered a temporary death, for the soul was believed to leave the body, allowing the priest or priestess to access and communicate with the spiritual world". What the viewer is seeing is Ellen almost dying, like she tells Thomas: "Yet it turned to torture, it would kill me.
This scene also has references to the "Dracula" novel, when Count Dracula bites Lucy Westenra for the first time. Mina Murray notices Lucy is absent from her bedroom, and goes seeking for her, finding her in their "favorite seat", the grave of a suicide in Kingstead churchyard: “there, on our favorite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white. The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately, but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.”
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“There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. [...] Lucy half reclining with her head lying over the back of the seat. She was quite alone, and there was not a sign of any living thing about [...] When I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing, not softly as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every breath. As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the collar of her nightdress close around her, as though she felt the cold. [...] She became more and more uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing, occasionally.” Afterwards, Lucy makes Mina promise not to tell anyone: "I tucked her into bed. Before falling asleep she asked, even implored, me not to say a word to any one, even her mother, about her sleep-walking adventure."
In Robert Eggers' adaptation, it seems the "favorite seat" is connected to a garden of lilacs; the visual storytelling device which represents the connection between Ellen and Count Orlok, "who remembers lilacs from when he was alive". Ellen is in a half reclining position as a visual reference to her book counterpart, and the same is true to Count Orlok bending over her to strangle her to death (his victims don’t turn into vampires, they just die, like in the 1922 original “Nosferatu”, and in folklore). He appears more beastly in this scene, probably, as a reference to Count Dracula in his wolf form, which Lucy and her mother see in the book. This also give another layer of meaning as to why Robert Eggers turned his Count Orlok into a Dacian wolf warrior.
Quite evidently, the Count doesn't succeed, probably because there is so much he can do from so far away, and he needs his curse removed from him, too. And he begins preparing his physical travel to Wisburg.
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Behind-the-Scenes Screencaps by the Author
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“Come to me. Come to me. A guardian angel, a spirit of comfort – spirit of any celestial sphere – anything – hear my call. Come to me.”
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