Variations on a Symphony of Horror: Providence Fails, Fate Prevails

The 2024 film Nosferatu was a passion project for its writer and director, Robert Eggers, who professes a longstanding fascination with vampirism. Upon landing the job—only his second directorial credit—back in 2015, Eggers expressed his surprise, stating, "It feels ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting for a filmmaker in my place to do Nosferatu next. I was really planning on waiting a while, but that's how fate shook out.”

That’s how fate shook out: this assessment also serves to describe the story that finally landed on our screens on Christmas Day of 2024, a resurrection that introduces a savior of its own in its transformation of the character of Ellen Hutter. As the erotic movie poster implies, this new adaptation focuses on her fatal sacrifice, making love to the embodiment of evil. This scene is present in the original, but contrary to the legend that any fair maiden could fulfill this role, in Eggers’ version the act is only effective in eradicating the vampire because Ellen herself performs it. Because her sensitivity to supernatural forces caused her to inadvertently awaken the Nosferatu, only she has the power to seduce and exorcise him; her fate is sealed from the very first scene.

There is considerable precedent for the use of fate as a narrative device, from Greek theater to religious scripture to fantasy sagas, and now, a gothic horror film. Appeals to fate serve as a useful endorsement of a protagonist’s importance, the fulcrum of their pivotal role. However, I would argue that such a choice does not supplant the need to develop a character who is compelling outside of their Chosen One status; material substance is still necessary to fill a mold. Therefore, aesthetically adequate but narratively disappointing, Eggers’ take on Nosferatu expands the kernels of fatalism that litter the original and asserts the primacy of fate over providence in a way that cements its central heroine but detracts from the mystique of the film’s source material. 

Before Nosferatu—indeed, a century before—there was Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, a 1922 silent film by FW Murnau. This story is framed by an unknown author writing from Wisborg, Germany (the setting of the film’s events), whose cryptic pages we occasionally glimpse as his account unfolds in action. In addition to this chronicle, and likely due to the necessary segmentation of being written on inter-title cards, much of the dialogue itself is succinct and sparing. Here, the Nosferatu is not summoned by Ellen specifically, but is simply driven by a primal hunger for warm blood and attractive throats, spreading disease and devastation as residents quarantine and experts scour ancient texts for an antidote. Fittingly, the second line of Murnau’s entire film, spoken by a passerby to a hurrying Hutter, is “No one can outrun their fate.” Implicit in this is the idea that one’s fate can never be fathomed or known, at least not until it is too late. 

The beginning of Eggers’s Nosferatu also has a line that sets the tone for the remainder of the film, uttered by Knock, again addressed to the young solicitor Hutter: “When I heard of your nuptials I knew it was providence.” What, then, is the difference between providence and fate? The former is often referenced in terms of God or nature providing divine guidance, care, and protection. From this, we can understand why the gleefully unhinged Herr Knock is always the one to invoke this phrase, for he is but an obedient servant to his dark “protector” Count Orlok. However, another definition of the term speaks to the nuance of being “provident” or prudent, i.e. making provisions for the future. This second meaning of “providence” seems to encapsulate this film’s Thomas Hutter, whose character is much more explicitly driven by a desire for financial prosperity and to provide for his new wife Ellen. 

But although this theme certainly exists, the fact remains that Knock is but an ancillary villain, and Thomas a secondary protagonist. The true focus of the story, as we see in everything from the aforementioned movie poster to its most dramatic scenes, is the relationship between Ellen and Orlok. These characters transcend the need for providence, as they are favored by fate—that is, the partiality of a contrived narrative. In sharp contrast to the silent version, Eggers’s adaptation is bloated with descriptive and expository dialogue, perhaps too reliant on the ease of this modern vehicle of storytelling. Consequently, the backgrounds of Nosferatu’s two most important characters are primarily told to us rather than shown, an unnecessary distillation of the source material that robs it of its sinister mystery. Ellen’s character in particular is profoundly limited by this Chosen One archetype, endowed with supernatural talents as uniquely consequential as they are vaguely developed. Her specialness is nevertheless constantly reinforced through surface-level observations: Knock deeming her a “nonpareil” to Thomas, the professor dubbing her a “remarkable child” upon first meeting her, and her own claim in a lengthy bedridden monologue that “I have done nothing but heed my nature.” Even Orlok plainly asserts that he “cannot be sated” without her, again informing us of an apparent fact without causal elaboration. 

This pattern exposes the biggest problem with the adaptation itself. It strives for clear outlines and grand set pieces without truly justifying this aim; it renders mythology in high definition and bleaches its pagan folklore into a clear-cut opposition of diametric powers. This issue is what I have been known to unofficially term the Stranger Things pitfall: the tendency of creators to overlook the fact that the unknowable chaos of a primordial realm of evil is infinitely more compelling than an anthropomorphized singular foe, no matter the quality of special effects. Like Vecna and Eleven, Orlok and Ellen are inextricably linked as hero and villain in a stark dichotomy more befitting of epic fantasy. Rather than a symphony of horror, Eggers offers a melody stripped of all but two components, leading to a bombastic yet simplistic crescendo, and one with regrettably little dissonance.