Since we know Eggers can and does direct action thrillers, the lack of action in Nosferatu is a clear creative choice. One of the best examples of Eggers' rejection of action comes early in the film, when Thomas the Hatter is trying to escape from Count Orlock's castle. Other directors might have shot this sequence with speed and intensity, perhaps alternating close-ups with a fast-moving camera. This would certainly make the scene exciting and directly put the audience in the shoes of Thomas. Instead, Eggers films this desperate man and his desperate actions from a distance, framing him in wide shots dominated by his foreboding prison. When he does move fast, the camera tends to move slowly with him, capturing the rhythm of the action but making him feel helpless and pathetic. We are not in the shoes of Thomas. We don't feel his adrenaline rush. We are an isolated observer, watching from afar as he is completely and utterly powerless in the face of something that makes any determined human action feel utterly futile.

Every human action in Nosferatu feels ... small. Only the all-powerful Orlok is allowed to dominate the frame, and the film uses only fast cuts or other typical tools of action cinema when he emerges from the shadows to rob the victim. The vampire is captured in a visual language associated with power, while any human character might as well be an ant crawling through the dirt. We see them wandering around, and they look so weak and so lonely.

Wide shots, static shots, and graceful but glacial camera movements continue throughout the film. It should be exciting when the "men on a mission" gather for one last trip to Orlok's lair, but Eggers doesn't let it be. Ultimately, their quest is a wild goose chase, and the vampire's defeat comes elsewhere, through a character who realizes that the only way to defeat him is to surrender completely. To surrender to inactivity.

A lot of horror movies are about defeat and how weak we are in the face of things that want to harm us. But Nosferatu is the rare film that actually makes us feel it in our bones.

I talked about this (and the rest of my favorite movies of 2024) on the latest episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:

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