Nobody does dread like Robert Eggers. The first half hour is a masterpiece as Nicholas Hoult descends further into oblivion. He’s the best he’s ever been as he shows so many different shades and flavors of fear and hesitation. They shoot the hell out of this sequence. I never wanted it to end.
If that that journey was electric and novel, the concurrent events in Germany are anything but. Lily-Rose Depp isn’t given much to do, but if Oscars are given to people who do the most acting rather than the best acting then she should have swept. It’s hard to form an opinion of her performance when the writing just moves from one tired trope to the next.
Thankfully Willem Defoe shows up and it gets more tolerable, but only just.
But then the movie shifts into something I’ve never seen, horror-as-disaster movie, and we’re back to the races! It’s electric from this point onwards even if we spend more time with a few side characters than I’d like.
The highs of Nosferatu are better than anything I can remember from Eggers, but it lacks the tightness of THE WITCH and so it was a tougher watch for me.
