Pop Culture Happy Hour - Nosferatu

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Nosferatu is a Dracula story with a twist. It stars Lily Rose-Depp as a new bride stalked by an evil bloodsucking creature of the night who brings death and terror in its wake. A handful of stalwart men – including her husband, played by Nicholas Hoult – attempt to defend Rose-Depp's virtue and defeat the undead scourge. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The stylish new film Nosferatu is a twist on the Dracula story. It stars Lily Rose Depp as a new bride, stalked by an evil, blood-sucking creature of the night who brings death and terror in its wake. A handful of stalwart men, including her husband, played by Nicholas Holt, attempt to defend Rose Depp's virtue and defeat, the undead scourge. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Nosferatu

on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Nikki Birch. She's a video producer at NPR's Jazz Night in America, and also a co-host of the podcast, A Thousand Eyes and One. Hey, Nikki. Hey, Aloha. I'm glad to be back. Also with this is Jordan Cruciola. She is a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Scene on Maximum Fun. Hey, Jordan.

Hello. Thanks so much for having me back. Of course. And rounding out the panel is Velture TV critic Raxana. Haddadi. Hey, Roxanna. Thank you so much for having me. I'm just laughing at this accent.

What a fun time. Oh, this accent. This old thing. I just threw it on. Nassverato has a strange history. It is a remake of the 1922 Silent German film directed by F. W. Murnau, which was itself an unauthorized adaptation, a rip-off, basically, of Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula. Like that original film, this new Nosphorotter relocates most of the novel's action from 1890s, Britain to 1830s, Germany.

It makes exactly the same changes to the Dracula Story 2, including the names of characters, but keeps Stoker's overall plot. Nicholas Holt plays Thomas, a young newlywed, sent to Transylvania to arrange the sale of a German estate to the mysterious Count Orlock. Orlock is played by Bill Scarsguard. Thomas begins to fall under Orlock's sinister thrall, and back in Germany, his wife Ellen, begins to sleepwalk and have visions of Orlock, who seems bent on seducing her. Ellen is played by Lily Rose Depp. Standing before me, all in black was death.

When Orlock finally arrives in Germany, Thomas secures the help of his friends. They're played by Aaron Taylor Johnson and Willem Defoe. Can they save Ellen's life and defeat the immortal demon? And a warning, this episode contains some discussion of sex. Nospherato was written and directed by Robert Eggers, whose past films include The Witch, the Lighthouse, and the Northman. It is in theaters now. Jordan, kick us off. What'd you think?

This was very much out my street. I continue to just be dazzled by the fact that Robert Eggers has been able to create the career that he has. You start with The Witch, and then you never have to go make a movie for anybody but yourself. And they're just these, like, meticulous period pieces that, like, check all the boxes for something that tells you, don't pitch this to a studio because they're never going to make. it. And I like his vibes horror. I like the, you know, the grotesquery that comes up in this movie. I'm glad they moved it to a German setting from England because there's just something darker and scarier about a German setting than there is England. And yeah, I was filled with dread. The man next to me was having just intermittent panics from the few, but very artfully placed jump scares. This was the moody, cloudy day, vampire horror movie that I wanted to get from it.

Yes, a perfect Christmas day. A perfect Christmas day movie. Yet another feel bad. Christmas movie. Exactly. Raxson, how about you? What do you think? I enjoyed it. I would not say that I enjoyed it as much as Jordan did, but I almost think that I, this is not a critique. I almost think I admired it more than I liked it, which is the thing that you sort of say when you're like, did I like it? But I, you know, I liked it. I think Aaron Taylor Johnson is very funny. He is doing the blowhard thing that a movie this serious sort of means. And I do think there are, are some really interesting, as Jordan said, like historical moments here that really just point out to you that Eggers, like, loves recreating specific villages and scenes and

vignettes to like exacting detail. What I am slightly trying to determine from my reaction is if I like how much we stayed within original Nosferatu story and how much we stayed with the in the, this vampire is going to be gross. Or, like, did I want to see Bill Scarsgaard be hot? And I can't, I'm like having a hard time deciding if I wanted that or not. So I'm pro, but Northman is still my favorite eggers, I think. Okay. Second that.

Second that. Standing for the Northman. Okay. What about you, Nikki? I feel similarly. I love vampire stuff. I love Nesferatu. I love Bram Stoker's Dracula.

And I really, really wanted to like this more than I did. It's funny, Roxanna, because I was kind of waiting for, like, the Dracula glow-up that we've become used to, and that never happened. But I really appreciated that it didn't happen. I think visually, it's really stunning. I like, I'm a videographer. I like the camera movements, like kind of like all the pans that were happening, the shots on sliders. That made me really happy. But, yeah, I feel like I wanted a little bit more of something, and I'm not quite sure what that is.

Maybe it'll come out what we're talking. Well, here's what I wanted more of. Maybe this is what you did. I mean, I really like this. And I had a great time. I think people are going to have a great time. Bring the kids. But, you know, I kind of, I get that Eggers loves the 1922 original Nosferatu as much as he does.

He said it's what made him want to be a director, right? I think here he's loving it a little too tightly. Like he's holding it too close to the chest. Like it's this precious jewel and he doesn't want to mess with it. And I went to the theater expecting him to mess with it. I went to the theater wanting to be swept away by this film, and I wasn't because it just seems like what he's doing in terms of imagery, a lot of it was done in the 1920,

Bernoultz. Some of it was done in the Werner Herzog remake in 1979 of Nostvaratu, and some of it, frankly, was done by Coppola in Bram Stoker's Dragon, 92, the Gary Oldman film, which also borrowed some of that German expressionistic over-the-top stuff. So I don't know. Maybe it's just that, you know, Eggers is basically my favorite director now. Maybe I wasn't ready for him to do a remake.

You know what I mean? Maybe I still want him to tell original stories. And so when I see him doing this so dutifully, I kind of want him to tell his own stories, or at least to tell stories where he gets to be what he is when he's telling an original story, which is a stylist. He's a stylist here. But the style in question is style from other directors. And that kind of disappointed me.

Hmm. You know, I think something else, like, I just did Ram Stoker's Dracula on our podcast because we did, like, a Halloween series. And the names were kept throwing me off. And I just wanted it to be a little bit different from that. I think that's what I was expecting. But the makeup was great. Yeah. The changes that were made to the characters and to their names are straight from the 1922 Murnau film.

But let's talk about the Lily Rose Depp performance, which is where I think this film stretches out and claims some territory of its own, because I think that performance is stunning. I also think he's giving the character of Ellen, which is kind of the Mina Harker stand in here, a lot more to do, a lot more presence. She's a lot more interesting than Mina Harker pretty much ever has been. What do you guys think?

Oh, poor Mina. Yeah, I think so, too. I thought that she was the most lucid, and she had a lot of agency. There was kind of the moments like, oh, let's just go her into an asylum, which has always scared me, always scared me, and makes me super happy I live now. But yeah, as a character, I really, really enjoyed a performance.

I'm so utterly swept away by Lily Road's Depp sort of generally. This is somebody who, I'll say it, the idol's one of the worst things I've ever seen in my entire life. It made me unable to listen to music by the weekend. Her and Margaret Quali, to me, are like the case for delicate white nepotism, because they are weird as can be. Those women get on screen and they leave it all on the field. They are audacious and they are unafraid of the grotesque and the hideous and freaky stuff. So yes, I love this delicate little white girl who could have any, the entree and the industry handed to her is like,

I'm going to take that entree and I am going to throw it on the floor and I'm going to ride in it and I'm going to go like full possession freak out in the subway. And that makes me incredibly happy. This is so interesting because I think her performance is very solid, but I don't think it's that solid when she has to talk. I think that she is very effective physically. Oh, yeah, those tremors. Yeah. Like, what we're sort of talking around is that this version,

and I think really the only reason why Eggers should remake it, is you give this character who has, like, an incredibly important relationship with the end of this film, you give her an actual backstory. And so I think that the way that that backstory is conveyed physically is very interesting. There's a lot of like weird sex stuff in this, which I just want to like bring up.

And I think when Depp has to do that part of it, like the moaning and writhing and having seizures that look like orgasms, I think the physical. aspect of that is very strong. I know that she trained in like Japanese theater dance styles to convey some of that. And so I think that part of the movie where you're watching something that feels very recognizable, like a laced up woman and a corset men consider to be frail or weak, and she is like pulling something out of herself that is very unwieldy. All of that I thought really worked.

But at the same time, like sometimes her line deliveries, I was like, I don't know if I buy the emotion of this necessarily until you're like shaking yourself out of bed because you're having like a weird vampire

sex dream. That part of it, that part of it I got. But the vampire sex dreams in this film are different than the ones we normally see in a Dracula film,

right? Because Scars Guard is playing Orlock as what he pretty much as in the book, which is a kind of an animated corpse, like a shambling mound with a biker stash, with the Sons of Anarchy stash. Yes. And relocating it to Germany means we are not setting it in Victorian England.

So the metaphor does not easily track over onto repressed Victorian sexuality. And also, Ellen is married, as opposed to Mina Harker, or Mina Murray at the time, who is a virgin, maiden, unmarried. So there's all kinds of layers that the Dracula story has that the Nassarato story in whatever version just doesn't play with much. And so to me, I'll defer to you folks, but like to me, Orlock is more a monster, more a clutching thing from the grave. And the sexuality is more about violence than it is about sensuality. The sexuality wasn't sexy. Yeah. It was grotesque.

It reminds me of like the scene and one of the scenes in House with the Dragon. where Allison is having sex with Baceres and he's like falling apart, you know? It reminded me of that. I wanted nothing to do with it. But I guess I was kind of here for it at the same time. Yeah, it's like because I think the way we perceive vampires and the way they're portrayed a lot now, it's like the dark, mysterious stranger who you're like, you're willing to like stick your neck out for literally.

And you don't get any of that here. Bill's brother Alexander, in case of point. Yeah, I do think that it's a real return to like actually. Actually, vampires are repulsive. They're not my favorite haughty, which is Bill Paxton, smeared with blood in a motorcycle jacket in near dark, right? Like, they're not that guy. They are something just really repellent. But I guess then my question for you, Glenn, is like, then did this version of the vampire not work for you?

Because you don't think it tracks to move it to Germany, or you just mean that you don't think, like, the metaphorical stuff is as clear? I think it's not telling the same story. Because I think Dracula is telling a story about sexual repression and libidnessness and a woman being freed from repression. And this is telling a different story. This is telling a different story about people who have some kind of connection. And it becomes less about romance, capital R, and becomes more about obsession and something needy and hungry. So more like straight horror. Yeah.

That's the worst, right? Well, all I was going to say is I also read it more as like a story about. consent, which is why I thought it was like sort of interesting to be coming out like in this era and that is so much a topic of conversation in terms of like women's sexuality. So I agree with you. I just, I'm curious what the conversation will be about the ending. And so that's sort of just where I was going with that as to how you thought it tracked by moving it. I like the return to like the vamporism as a parasite. When when they describe him as like the plague is like a plague ship has crashed and the rats. set out across the city. So gross. And yeah, the rats set out and our Renfield stand in is hideous and eating the heads off rats. And there's nothing funny about him. And we just had Nicholas Holt playing a very different Renfield with a very different

Dracula in the Renfield movie last year. But I was glad to see like the rotting back of Orlock's skull coming through his hair. And like you said, like the gay men's biker gang stash that he has. Honestly, the internet will thirst after everything. And the way those arms hang down at his side. with those defined muscles and those pectorals, people are going to find a way with this Count Orlock somehow. But, like, I like that it is daring you to, like, notice a pectoral through, like,

an open weeping sore. And I was very glad to see that amidst, like, the beauty of a meticulously constructed Robert Eggers' piece. I like that this movie was gross. And that Willem Defoe shows up, this, like, Robert Eggers' right-hand comic relief coming in and just being the zaniest eccentric academic. I have wrestled with the devil as Jacob wrestled the angel and pendul. And I tell you, if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists.

I liked what Defoe was doing. You know, you shouldn't compare, but it's inevitable. But he's doing like 30% of what Tony Hopkins was doing in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Like, I mean, it's the same kind of role. But I think because the Coppola Dracula was so over the top. and sensuous and campy. It gave Hopkins playing the Van Helsing character, which is the von Frans character here.

It gave him more license to just go nuts. And here, Defoe was having fun, but he's not going over the top in the way that he goes over the top in just in Beetlejuice, for example. Like, he's much bigger in that. In the lighthouse. In the Northman. Like he goes bigger.

In the Northman, he goes bigger. Roxanne, I want to come back to something you said about consent, because that complicates this movie, right? That complicate this. This thing is about grotesquery and violence, sexual violence, basically. And yet there's this element of consent that is added in, boy, that makes it a lot, to coin a phrase, chewier than it seemed to me upon first watching. What do you guys think? I think what just stuck out to me in what felt very meaningful is that the scene in which I think Depp gives the best.

like actual well-rounded performance is when she is talking to her husband about like her past relationship with this guy and now she regrets it. But at the time, he like filled a void. And that is a very recognizable conversation of like, for sure. You dated someone who sucked and you're realizing now that you made some bad choices. But at the time, that was to a certain degree your choice. And so you are living with like the weight of knowing that you made a mistake and will you ever get the opportunity to rectify that like that to me is more like the core of this film yes i think it is about obsession yes i think it's about the grotesque yes i think it is about like a certain amount of like social restraint but i think that sort of ability to look back on your past and reassess what you

did and get like a redo. Like I think that in a in a romantic sexual context is like very interesting to give a female character the opportunity to do in this film. So that's where like the consent part of it comes through for me. And that I think is what makes it absolutely not sensual in the way that Bram Stoker's Dracula was or like Buffy or Twilight or any of other like countless sexy vampires. But I don't think the fact that he's not sexy. I don't think that diminishes that, like, to a certain degree, these two entities or beings or whatever chose each other for whatever reason.

Like, this movie is almost a sub-tweet of, like, the monster romance genre. Right. Well, and you're framing, like, that, Roxanna, like, it makes the way he returns to her, like, she starts having these, like, flashback nightmares. and then he's like an abusive boyfriend coming back. And like if you take offer up the notion of consent, then like what he's doing is like technically, like if you read just like the first part of it of like technically consent,

like she has to come unto me of her own free will, she cannot be forced. She cannot be coerced. But I'm going to kill everyone and everything. I'm going to ruin her life. Yeah. I'm going to set a plague upon the world. Yes.

If you don't say yet. Because this is what you asked for. I would never do something that was against your wishes. But until you wish it, I'm going to annihilate existence. Yeah. And so just think of that while you're making your choice. The twist that this puts on, I will cross oceans of time to find you. Right?

Yeah. You know? Yeah. I'm like, oh, that's so sweet and wonderful. And actually, it's like, this man won't leave you alone. Me and a plague of rats are coming. There's a line in the movie, and I may or may not misquoted, but I wrote it down. And he says, I'm just an appetite.

And I feel like that brings everything you guys are saying just together. It's just like unbridled. Yeah. Passion, obsession. I know if you guys saw a late night with the devil where they were talking about possession and they're like, no, psychic infestation. And for this, it feels like that to me. I mean, this has been a great discussion, but is there anything we haven't hit yet that we want to talk about?

I want to talk about how they don't suck blood through the neck. That was super cool. Yeah. I go straight to the source. I loved that and like the choreography of how that looks and just the, the, sound design and the body motion of the blood-sucking process was so, that like gets inside you and makes you feel something in one direction or another. It's like, are they breastfeeding?

What's going on here? You know, it's just, it's so, it's grotesque. It's great. So pour yourself some eggnog and head out to the theater. Spike it though. Yeah. I mean, this and a double header of baby girl would really be something for people to do. Put on a Christmas triple, baby girl, no spheratu, and then bring back David

Finchers, the girl with a dragon tattoo to give yourself the blackest Christmas of that time. All right, well, I was having trouble figuring out what I thought about this movie and this conversation. That's a great conversation. Help me kind of zero in on it. We want to know what you think about Los Fort Alto. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com

slash p.c-c-h and on Lutterboxed at Lutterboxed.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. And that brings us to the end of our show. Jordan Cruciola, Roxana Hadari, Nikki Birch. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Thank you, guys. This episode was produced by Hufza Fatima and Lenin Sherburn, and edited by Mike Katzv. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. And Alokanin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.