Horror is my favorite genre, but for the most part it doesn't scare me. I'm not bragging about how brave I am (trust me; a lot of things scare me - I have a panic attack every time I have to get on a plane), I'm just saying that I've spent so much time with the horror genre that I've grown desensitized to it. I still love and appreciate horror movies, but very rarely do they actually make me is afraid. So when I see a horror film that manages to touch me on a raw, primal, emotional level, I'm impressed. And Robert Eggers' Nosferatu The new take on both Dracula and FW Murnau's silent film classic seemingly achieves the impossible: it's scary!

To be fair, horror, like comedy, is a very subjective genre. What scares one person may seem funny to others. In my experience, many contributors to the general public "jump scare" with horror. I don't want to get off my long jumper, but I will say this: while some jumps can be effective and impressivemany filmmakers employ them in lazy, cheap ways (the most stereotypical example is when a harmless cat jumps out of nowhere, screeching and startling the characters on screen). In my humble horror movie fan opinion, they are not what make a horror movie scary. The kind of fear I want is on a more psychological, emotional level. I'm talking about fear; the unshakable feeling that something is wrong in an almost indescribable way. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an expert in this, and his films "Pulse", "Cure", and this year's Chime they all manage to scare me by creating an overwhelming sense of dread.

When I sat down to watch Robert Eggers' Nosferatu, I knew more or less what I was getting into. I've seen almost every Dracula movie in existence and know the story inside and out. And sure, Eggers' film doesn't change much, story-wise. It follows the very similar rhythms of both Murnau's original adaptations and many other Draculas. And yet, despite my foreknowledge, Eggers' film actually scared me. How? What is the secret?

The key ingredient that makes Eggers' Nosferatu so terrifying is its eerie atmosphere. Working with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke (who also shot Eggers' films The Lighthouse and The North Man), the director creates an atmosphere of nightmare right from the jump. In a short prologue, we see how Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), a young woman, is drawn to and tormented by a mysterious, shadowy figure. We know, of course, that this figure is Count Orlok, an ancient vampire whom Ellen associates with her melancholic spirit. Eggers wisely keeps Orlok, played by an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgård, off camera as long as possible.

Before she makes her grand entrance, we follow Ellen's husband Thomas (Nicholas Hult) as he leaves Germany and heads to Transylvania to make a land deal with Orlok. Before reaching Orlok's castle, Thomas stops at the local inn, where the superstitious locals mock him. Later he witnesses a strange ceremony in which these locals dig up a corpse and drive a metal pole into his chest, full of blood and gore. The moment is broken when Thomas wakes up in his bed, horrified. Was it all a nightmare? Or did he really witness this barbaric event? It's unclear, and that's the point. Things only get weirder and more surreal from here, as Thomas makes his way to Orlok's castle in a near daze. It's snowing, the camera is jumping and things feel positively bizarre. When Thomas finally meets Orlok, the vampire remains mostly unseen, but we hear his deep, husky, ferocious voice.

Thomas' scenes in Orlok's castle are the most effective for me. Anyone who has ever had a bad fever can probably remember the weird, sick feeling it causes. Everything you see is felt strange in some subtle way; it's like your brain is boiling inside your skull and frying your thoughts, causing your perception to distort. Eggers is able to recreate this very feeling as Thomas, in a kind of hypnotic daze, falls under Orlok's spell.

From there, "Nosferatu" becomes more disturbing as Orlok heads to Germany and sets his sights on Ellen and those around her. While the story of a vampire who grows obsessed with an innocent female victim is well rooted in horror stories, Eggers' Nosferatu finds ways to add interesting twists to the formula. Ellen, a woman prone to convulsions, seems to believe that her depressed nature has somehow driven Orlok; as if it were a physical representation of her troubled mind. Orlok, on the other hand, seems drawn to Ellen because her melancholic soul is like a type of catnip; he can't resist her. These two figures are locked in a kind of psychosexual drama, with Depp's wild physical performance being invoked Isabelle Adjani's unforgettable work in Possession.

All of this creates an almost suffocating sense of doom in the film, which is only enhanced by the cold, wintry setting (the film takes place around Christmas, and there's even a candle-lit Christmas tree in one scene). Later, when one of the film's characters breaks open the coffin and embraces the corpse of a loved one, the mood is almost too sad to bear, which only heightens the general horror.

At the same time, Eggers remembers having a little fun with his dark film. Almost everything Willem Dafoe does as the Van Helsing-like vampire hunter gets laughs, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a lot of fun as a man who seems incredibly annoyed that the women in the film are being damn hysterical about this vampire business. But the overwhelming sense of dread is what makes Nosferatu so effective, and as its final, haunting frames arrive, it's hard not to be impressed by what Eggers has created.

Nosferatu is in theaters now.