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Which Directors Have Matched German Expressionism’s Freak?


Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu joins a small canon of work by filmmakers who have attempted to remake classics from interwar Germany.

Under Joseph Losey’s direction, the seedy streets of Berlin become the sunny avenues of Los Angeles, the shambling beggars become roving gangs of coiffed teenage boys, the killer’s drink changes from schnapps to bourbon, and the overall effect is a little less morally ambiguous than the original. As such, the newest Nosferatu has the period-drama sumptuousness (if not the color palette) of Coppola’s 1992 Dracula, and Bill Skarsgård’s mustachioed Orlok resembles an actively rotting version of Gary Oldman’s count more than Max Schreck and Klaus Kinski’s cue balls with fangs. Ultimately this Nosferatu understands that the final eight minutes of the original is one of the most intensely captivating horror sequences ever committed to celluloid, and Eggers puts a century’s worth of technological development to work in making his own encounters with the vampire not just hair-raising but similarly throttling.

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