(Life Through the Lens - Photo Illustration/MetroCreativeConnection)

“Does evil come from within us or from beyond?”

***

Oh, to be young and free. Little Vlady lived a charmed childhood south of Transylvania in the 1430s. As long as you didn’t plummet off an 8,000-foot mountainside whilst trying to play hide and seek with local peasant boy Cătălin, everything came up roses. When your father, Vlad II Dracul, is the ruler of Wallachia, you kinda run the show. Things would get a bit dark when your dad went to his “Order of the Dragon” meetings, but he always came back smiling … and with bags marked “Ottoman-meat.”

Then politics creeped in. Because these mountains sat between the Christian Crusaders and the Muslims, they were often the site of bloody battles. Young Vlad grew accustomed to disfigured bodies and limbs without owners. As my favorite adage goes: When life hands you a field of teeth and bones, you can make some killer friendship bracelets!

When Daddy Vlad gets the call to embark on a diplomatic journey to meet the great Sultan Murad II, young Vlad and his brother Radu tag along. What’s better than seeing the enemy up close, sitting around a table and nibling on a charcuterie board? Turns out, the meeting was a trap, and all three Draculs were held captive. Daddy Vlad was released, but the boys had to remain – it was insurance that the ruler of Wallachia would be more forgiving toward the Ottomans. After all… they had his sons!

While a captive of the Ottoman Empire, Vlad became a scholar and skilled warrior… but was also, at times, imprisoned and tortured. He was constantly reminded of his place, and that wasn’t at the head table. Our young Vlad again was witness to cruelty and bloodshed.

Before he was finally released in 1447, Vlad’s father was overthrown and swamped (Dark Age slang for murdered in the marshes). Vlad’s older brother Mircea was then tortured, blinded and buried alive. Now 16 years old and back in Wallachia, Vlad shed the childishness once held so dear – constant carnage and steady slaughter had created a new persona: Dracula (“son of the dragon”).

His first order of business as ruler of Wallachia was to decapitate his vocal challenger Vladislav II (his second cousin). Dude had to go. He then held a “party” for all the arguing aristocracy in his land… and had them stabbed. And here is where his legend begins: bloodshed was a casual pastime… “but what if we displayed the bodies? You know… like… on a stick?” The tag “the Impaler” was born as hundreds of figures twitched in the breeze at the end of vertical spears. Gotta love those Dark Age socials!

For the next 20 years, Vlad Dracula held his land with a deadly grip. Let me tell you, he got really good at impaling, too! He killed up to 80,000 people in his royal run (20,000 impaled in just one sitting then displayed as one gigantic message to the world). For all that, he was a local hero, doing whatever it took to maintain national pride and peace.

In 1476, Vlad Dracula was ambushed, beheaded and delivered to the Ottoman ruler to be displayed in Constantinople. So it goes.

Weirdly enough, he amounted to but a footnote in history (mainly because the Dark Ages were completely oversaturated with violence and blood). As the centuries progressed, he was basically an unknown. Then one obscure history book dug into his legend. Then a middle-aged, Irish, aspiring writer, who was disabled as a child and earned a degree in mathematics, found this history book, was drawn to the inhumanity inside this all-too-human figure and wrote the 1897 masterpiece “Dracula.”

I mean… you can’t make stuff like this up!

***

In a period of great loneliness and emptiness, a young girl named Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) calls out into the darkness for comfort and acceptance. Her plea is heard, and an entity enters her life, coming at night and overwhelming her completely. What begins as pleasant and pleasurable slowly turns violent and evil. In the 1830s, convulsions and seizures are misunderstood, misdiagnosed and mistreated… usually followed by the phrase, “She’s got too much blood! Take some out.”

When Ellen meets Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), the nighttime terrors cease in the face of newfound love. After they are married, a monetary opportunity is presented to young Thomas: Go to the outstretches of the Carpathian Mountains to get some estate papers signed by the reclusive but wealthy Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). A six-week trip for easy money? Sounds good… except the dreams begin to haunt Ellen again.

The second Thomas leaves, Ellen is in the ghostly grip of the monster. The second Thomas arrives in Transylvania, he is in the ghastly grip of the monster, as well. Like… for real. Shut in, tormented and drained. Not amusing. One star on airbnb.com.

Papers now signed, Orlok is the proud homeowner of a decrepit mansion in the city. The city where Ellen lives. As he draws ever closer, the dreams tighten. Thomas escapes, but will he arrive in time? Can he even stop what is coming, or has Ellen already given herself over to the darkness?

All right, first things first… I don’t like being scared. Thrilled? Sure. Terrified? No thanks. I thought director Robert Eggers’ first film, “The Witch” (2015), was… OK. His second film, “The Lighthouse” (2019), was amazingly unique in tension and ambiguity. His third film, “The Northman” (2022), was a stinker, completely washed out and directionless. I’ll say this about his work: It has a beautiful eye for composition and a precision in the progression.

I believe “Nosferatu” to be middling work in his filmography. He has maintained much of the macabre and meticulousness, but the film refuses to take an adequate step into the fullness I so yearn to see/feel. It relied heavily on the style but seemed to forget the substance. The first hour was stellar in intrigue and subtlety… then it kept going. It began to embrace the typical genre clichés: heavy-handed stiffness and over-acted moments. The more I saw Count Orlok, the more I began to laugh at his silly mustache and his comically overworked accent! He was nothing more than a parody, an SNL skit waiting to happen. Eggers also penned the script which denied motivation, simply existing to move the mood. His Orlok was just an ugly monster doing monstrous stuff. It began something with Depp’s character Ellen, with the suppression and exploitation, but it didn’t bring her story to completion.

On a positive note, Eggers is, again, fully in command of his sculpted elegance; the gothic world is beautiful, rich in texture and feature. The production design of Craig Lathrop is gorgeously executed. The cinematography by Jarin Blaschke is picturesque and captivating. The costumes by Linda Muir and David Schwed are steady and smart.

As a cast, there are some arresting performances. Hoult is fantastic as always; his career is underrated and continually surprising (in a good way!). Simon McBurney delivers the film’s best showing as Knock (similar to Dracula’s “Renfield”); he is troubled yet grounded… and by far the scariest thing around!

Then there is everyone else. Depp delivers a mostly good performance, with a few heavily rehearsed exceptions. It is hard to play a character that is “all” anything; it offers no width or scale. Skarsgård’s Orlok was a major disappointment; it was so carefully constructed that it became cardboard. I believe Willem Dafoe to be one of the best actors around… but even his turn as Professor von Franz (Dracula’s “Van Helsing”) was a dud; it was consistently confusing and misguided.

Without the passion, without the romance, without the bite, “Nosferatu” is just another film about mustaches and fluids. Psh, like we haven’t seen 1,000 of those!

REPORT CARD: Nosferatu

Assessment: A few good moments but unexceptional overall