This latest version of the Bram Stoker novel “Dracula” is a mix of the sumptuous and the shocking, and it has a long cinematic lineage.
“Nosferatu” was the title of a 1922 silent interpretation, directed by F. W. Murnau, as well as a re-make done in 1979 by Werner Herzog.
The vampire here wasn’t your great-grandfather’s Dracula — Bela Lugosi in evening wear. Under the name Count Orlok, he was a white, skeletal ratlike creature.
In this newest incarnation, written and directed by Robert Eggers, the Count is a hulking, growling blur who, at first, barely appears out of the darkness. When he’s most visible, he looks like Vlad the Impaler, the mustachioed medieval warrior. He’s played by Bill Skarsgård, who was Pennywise the clown in the recent version of “It.”
Nicholas Hoult plays Thomas Hutter, the naïve-then-terrified realty agent who helps Orlok relocate from his Carpathian castle to a populous German city of the 1830’s.
But more at the core of the story is Thomas’ wife Ellen, a clairvoyant since childhood who has unwittingly formed a bond with Orlok. As in the earlier versions of “Nosferatu”, she realizes she has to sacrifice herself to stop the plague of evil. Lily-Rose Depp gives such a soulful performance that she may not be identified much longer as “daughter of Johnny Depp.”
Willem Dafoe, as the Van Helsing character, is relatively understated, though he also boasts that he’s seen things that “would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb.”
Filmmaker Robert Eggers was a Sundance discovery. His feature debut “The Witch” was a hit at the 2015 festival. He is rightly earning kudos here for his Gothic picture-book set pieces, impressionistically threatened by thudding darkness, ominous fog, or infernally flaming candles, with vital contributions from production designer Craig Lathrop and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke.
On the down side, the required horror-movie shocks add little that’s new, with people staring, drooling or screaming into the camera, vampires crunching down on victims, etc. (Beware! Even chubby little toddlers aren’t safe in this picture.)
There’s a little too much of Depp’s Linda Blair-like conniption fits. And the Count’s gargled accent gets close to parody.
Even with an unsteady mix of the gaudy and the gory, let’s hang four garlic cloves out of five for “Nosferatu.”