Nosferatu Through the Dirty Bubble

A Review of Robert Eggers' 2024 film - Nosferatu

2 January 2025

My Own Magick

Long before I saw Nosferatu, I was trying to get back in touch with a sense of spirituality and magic. Not necessarily in a religious way, but I'd been through a lot and experienced unexplainable (sort of) things that made me long for the days I grew up a witch via my mother. Just a sense of connection and understanding and a bit of something magical to look forward to and around. But I knew I couldn't return to Gardner wicca or some offensive mishmash of ancient beliefs put together by British whites. I did some research and found chaos magick and its magicians. Folks who worshipped movie characters and made holy symbols of Tamagotchi and plastic nick knacks. It felt free and intuitive and as though it captured the mundane magical connection I hoped for.

By chance, I happened to watch Suspiria (2018) not long after this discovery. It felt like a piece of my soul was in that film. It felt like, in watching it, a tiny piece of my soul was magnetized from my being and became one with the film. It was horror unlike I'd really ever seen it. And the end and its glorious, quite evil, correct feeling revel touched me in a way a movie never had. Something in me had been laid bare in Suspiria somehow and so I named my "goddess" Mater Suspiriorum and started doing audible and strange sighing and breathing during rituals. Nothing I'd done magically had ever felt so correct and so to this day I thank Mater Suspiriorum when I take my kratom, when I recite the serenity prayer, when I do seasonal ritual.

I hadn't felt that way again watching a film until now.

Dissection

Nosferatu is a story about an ancient vampire and his classic vampire conundrum of being obsessed with one particular woman for sure. But really, to me, it's wholly about Ellen. It's about Ellen's quest for self actualization, for satisfaction, for understanding of herself and the parts of her that frighten.

The movie starts with Ellen as a young teen. She's in bed alone and desperately calling out for angels or anyone to hear her, to come to her and provide companionship that will understand her. Later, we know that at this time Ellen has been written off as mad trash by her family. A "hysterical", "melancholic", mad freak who can correctly guess her Christmas presents and read portents. The strength of her intuition has been shit on and suppressed. But something in her knows it's good. A skill, a feature of her essence she appreciates. And so instead of wishing to God to change her, she wishes to angels to join her. To be her friend.

In response she hears a powerful and strange voice, speaking Latin, or something else ancient and strange, and asking her to give herself over. A towering shadow appears at her opened window and she gives herself to it. To the companionship of the only one who's accepted her madness, the strength of her innate magick. And she doesn't just metaphorically give herself to it. She fucks it. In the dirt behind a bush she cums in ecstasy to this shadow. And for a moment she feels known, held, wild and magick and dark and maybe twisted but that's her. That's who she is.

Throughout the film she discusses how Orlok isn't always welcome in her bed and in her thoughts, but he comes anyway. And I want to address this because many folks have understandably read this as him being an abuser, a rapist who won't leave her alone. A reasonable interpretation. But for me, Ellen isn't being wholly honest here. And this gets sticky and gross but bear with me. I think Ellen has always liked it but she feels great shame. She discusses the moment she fucked Orlok's shadow and she becomes most upset when recalling her father finding her and screaming "SIN, SIN" at her. She did not feel discomfort or shame until it was applied upon her. I believe until she found Thomas and felt her relationship with the shadow was cheating, her internality was that she admired the companionship and ability to be free with her body and her sex and her madness. She appreciated this bizarre psychic link because she knows she is special, in tune with weird forces. A Persephone of sorts (not the stolen one that was created later as Roman propaganda, the original consenting queen of death). And she admires this in herself when there isn't some man in her ear telling her she's a disgusting freak.

Repeatedly, I feel Ellen to be a sort of genderless figure of magickal ability until an external force genders her. She never speaks in such a way as to revel in her gender, often, to me, she speaks in spite of it. She is gendered by men who appreciate her physicality and men who seek to diagnose her. But even her relationship with Thomas is different than relationships of the time and we see this in the contrast with their friends.

Now, I don't mean to say she is canonically trans or something, I mostly mean I think gender for her is an afterthought, a social reality she puts up with. I find her love with Thomas especially beautiful because when they are together the rest melts away. Thomas does not treat her as a mad woman meant to be locked up and protected. He truly meets her as an equal, as a soulmate. He seems to appreciate her weirdness and he does not speak of her and her ability to breed as a major feature of their relationship, as was common at the time. He's asked when he will have children and he deflects saying he wants to wait until he has enough money. But he says this with a distance that felt to me excusatory. A quiet recognition that this isn't his choice. There's a scene where he and Ellen interact in the morning and they treat their cat like their child. Again, unusual for the time period. And more depictions, for me, of their deep and unconcerned relationship. Especially when later Ellen tells the professor the cat has no master or mistress.

Vivisection

Ellen speaks of not wishing to see Orlok once she finds Thomas and this is because she has found someone who truly accepts and sees her. The thing she begged for all those years ago, but she found it now irl. Orlok was like that weird internet boyfriend you have who scares and excites you. Who puts you in touch with a darker self. But she found a better more stable version of this in Thomas. However, that wish for feral sexuality, for the darkness remains in and around her. As it does for me and for many of us. And she struggles throughout the movie with understanding these feelings. With understanding that her appreciation for the dark and for the fucked up and the fucking doesn't have to cut her off from those more normal. That this appreciation doesn't make her evil or sinful or wholly foreign (though the film at times categorizes her as so).

There's a scene that I love wherein Ellen enters one of her fugue states when speaking with Thomas. But you can tell she's more present than usual. She's crawling on the floor toward Thomas and licks his cock through his pants, spit falling off her face she says something like, "you could never do what he does for me". And I'm sure some people understood what happens next to be a sort of anger on Thomas's part, an angry fucking to prove her wrong. But I didn't. Nicholas's subtle acting to me showed pain but interest, horniness from this. To me, he seemed so taken by her. By her freedom and honest existence. By HER horniness. Her Reagenesque teasing becomes Ellenistic pleading, her voice losing the veneer of possession to become her own as she begs. "Yes, please, please" as Thomas fumbles to get in her, desperate. I actually cried during this scene. Like almost sobbed. It felt so touching and beautiful to me. Like she laid her true feelings bare, that Orlok excites her, that she sees something in that life, that she's welcoming Thomas into it, and Thomas says I'm coming. I want you, all of you, any of you. It was so honest and beautiful and complete.

Later, when Thomas finds her naked with Orlok he doesn't react in disgust, he doesn't cry out that she's a slut or a cheater. He tenderly takes her hand. I lost it here too. I think because these moments reminded me so much of my partner. Of her acceptance of me as a whole. Of her interest and love of my darkness.

Thomas loves Ellen because of her weird not in spite of it. He seems uncomfortable when men speak on how beautiful she is because that isn't the root of his concern for her. He doesn't treat her as if she's "just mad" because he doesn't see it that way. His care even deeper than that of her friend, who is eventually convinced by her annoying husbands hatred and tells Ellen "why must you be so contrarian" or something. And I think this is especially true after he takes the journey to the Count's castle.

Ellen warns him, says she had portentous dreams the night before. That darkness will engulf her and their loved ones if he goes and that she will like it. And he ignores her, dismisses her. His debt blinds him, pushes him back into the arms of normies. She can't be right, she must be dramatic and foolish because I NEED this money. He is overtaken by the ghost of normal society, by the ghost of capital and the implied punishment of not having it.

Sidebar: The Castle

Back to Ellen

There's a scene in I think all the Nosferatus now that people often discuss. Ellen wakes from a cold sweat and exclaims, "he's here!" With an odd implacable excitement. In Eggers' film she then runs outside and finds Thomas sick upon his horse. But is that who she meant? There's a sense that if Thomas had not been there, she would've kept running. Especially as she believes Thomas to be kind of fully gone at this point. Completely MIA. It's hard to tell if her magick sensed Thomas at all or if she meant the count. Especially with Egger's careful timing and framing. And I really loved it. To me, Ellen is a deeply lonely person. Not unlike someone like me with BPD, she doesn't really function without a companion. When Thomas is gone, you can see her start to accept the Count as her new option. He'd been there all along anyway, so I guess with Thomas gone, now's the time. So this scene is fascinating to me because I think it imparts both relief and disappointment. Ellen, like me as a junkie, is constantly seeking excuses to give herself to her darkness. She can't choose to do it, so she seeks external choosing, forced choosing. When Thomas is gone she is broken but I also sense a tiny glint of excitement in her eyes. Both that she was right in telling Thomas not to go but also in that this is the Great Excuse. The "fuck it" moment as they say in NA. The big thing to push her toward her vampiric destiny. I feel this way about Bella Swan in Twilight and her pregnancy. People often fairly claim Bella stayed pregnant in Twilight because Stephanie is Mormon and I think that's part of it, but I always found it interesting that Edward, usually the shining beacon for regressive religious tendencies, wants it fucking gone. Stephanie's clear fave character is Edward and he is meant to depict almost the perfect man. Religious sensibilities with a dark and sexy twist. Oh sorry Bella we can't fuck until we are married. If I'd known you before I would've courted you proper with a chaperone-ass. So his desire to abort the gnarly baby feels to me like a reveal of Stephanie. But Bella, she keeps it because she knows this is it. Her excuse. The external force to push her into the arms of monsterdom. Another instance I find very relatable.

Back to Thomas' Return

I was a bit confused when Thomas was afraid of Ellen when he first got back. This harmed some of what I'd wanted to believe about the movie but it also just didn't feel consistent to me with Thomas' words of confirmation to Ellen. If he was afraid of her magick why repeatedly tell her it's good and she was right. But I realized later on when Thomas tells the professor that Orlok is inside of him as a result of the blood sucking. Orlok is showing him those images of bloody Ellen, he's trying to scare Thomas away from her. And this leads into where I get a bit more real about Orlok.

The Count

I think there's many readings of the count ofc. Mine is complex and surely made so by his actions in isolating Ellen. I think Orlok is abusive but not in the way many seem to. I think he's abusive in a boringly average way. He seeks to cut her husband out of the picture so they can be together. He undermines their relationship and uses his spooky magic to try to force them apart. When this isn't working, he escalates to threatening folks she loves. Classic abusive villain shit. And I appreciate these things because the crux of the modern vampire myth is patriarchal abuse. So it makes sense to include these sorts of things in the movie to include The Count within the modern genre. But more than that, I feel like the basic nature of these abuses serves as a reflection of Ellen's aforementioned desire to be taken, stolen, forced from regular life. (This was sort of deliciously classic smut fiction to me as well, if you're familiar.)

There's a moment where The Count and Ellen are speaking and he says something like "I have to consume you, for I am an appetite" and this clicked something into place for me. For me, Orlok is in many ways a projection of Ellen's desires. I think there's a reading of the film wherein Orlok isn't real and this is the story of a plague happening concurrent with one woman's awakening to herself. The plague and discontent in the city setting a violent and gnarly backdrop for a person who sees themself as violent and gnarly and into that shit. That the violence of the situation has turned Ellen inward, that her excitement at this emergency reveals something about herself to herself.

I think there's a reading of the film where Thomas leaves, ignoring her pleas and has a terrible journey ripe with strife perhaps inflicted by his witchy wife and returns to find her bursting at the seams at being left alone among dark tragedy.

I don't think I love this reading. I don't think it's perfect or what I want but I think it's interesting. And I appreciate that it feels to me it can exist. And that the characterization of The Count as being wholly tied up in Ellen allows for this sort of reading.

In the first Nosferatu film, the vampire is characterized as a force of nature. A kind of rampant nature spirit confused and intoxicated by its interest in humans. This Nosferatu isn't quite that but he comes very close. Rather than being a spirit of nature, though, he strikes me as a physical manifestation of humanity and our interaction with nature. The dark curiosity we have with nature's violent randomness, the sometimes sexual excitement we feel when seeing a building taken by nature. When hearing romanticized tellings of the days of the plague. I think curiosity is the best way to put this. The curiosity to become monstrous, to be close to monsters, to enact monstrous things like plagues and madness and dark sex. As all good vampires should be, he is our weirdness manifest. He lays bare all that embarrasses and disgusts us about humanity and our place in the world. And I love that we see this touch many characters in different ways. Like Thomas's better understanding of his wife after his homoerotic bond is created with The Count. Like The Professors mad laughter as he calls out the solution he figured among ancient texts and the mind of a witch. Like Knock's servitude and undying loyalty to The Count. Like the travelers rituals and refusal to try to communicate the danger to Thomas. All the different ways we internalize these embarrassments and wonders.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, I loved Nosferatu. I think Eggers is maybe incapable of making a bad film. I think Eggers lives in my walls. I was filled with creative and spiritual inspiration watching this film. You can feel his passion for the source material and it's infectious. I want to encourage anyone reading this to disagree with me too, to find what you will find in the film. To hate what I found. Because it's rich and there's plenty to go around.