In following in F.W. Murnau and Werner Herzog’s footsteps to take a stab at the time-honored vampire tale based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic novel, writer-director Robert Eggers doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel but still manages to surprise and find an elegant expression to his core obsessions with this impeccably crafted tale of repressed desire, guilt, and mass hysteria.
Eggers’ long-gestating dream project benefits from a remarkably committed tour-de-force performance by Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen, a woman haunted in dreams, preyed upon, and torn to pieces by a reclusive Romanian Count (Bill Skarsgård), who unleashes hell and unspoken suffering upon his arrival to 19th-century Germany.
Even the parts that don’t quite work (an extra 20-30 minutes of fat could’ve easily been left on the cutting room floor) are easily neutralized by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s carefully composed visuals, a stacked A-list cast firing on all cylinders, and an unforgettable climax that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. And let’s be honest here: Watching Willem Dafoe in his element rattle off lines like “I have seen things in this world that would have made Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!” is pretty tough to resist.
