Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu

Bela Lugosi memorably launched the tradition of suavely elegant portrayals of Count Dracula. His approach remains the most popular. However, he was predated by Max Schreck’s depiction of the infamous Count in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, whose freakish appearance served as a physical manifestation of his moral corruption. He was also German. Lugosi and Anne Rice’s smooth-talking vamps remain more popular, but Schreck still spawned his followers, including Werner Herzog’s remake of the 1922 silent classic (with the names re-Stokerized). Now, horror auteur Robert Eggers’ presents his take on the Teutonic Dracula story in Nosferatu, which opens Christmas day in theaters.

Eggers’ screenplay returns to the names Henrik Galeen’s century-old screenplay that so transparently substituted Count Orlok, Thomas Hutter, and Prof. Sievers for Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker, and Dr. Seward, Stoker successfully sued, securing the destruction of nearly all but a few blessedly surviving prints of the film. In one of Eggers’ few departures, Prof. Van Helsing is now Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, a brand new moniker for the familiar occultist.

Once again, newlywed Hutter journeys to Transylvania to facilitate a reclusive nobleman’s real estate transaction—and it turns out just as badly as ever. However, Orlok intentionally wanted Hutter out of the way, because he already forged a sinister connection to his new bride, Ellen (a.k.a. Mina). Since Hutter’s boss Knock (a.k.a. Renfield) also happens to be Orlok’s enthralled servant, he duly orders Hutter to the Carpathians, where the junior clerk gets somewhat delayed in the castle.

While much more monstrous than conventional tall, dark, and handsome vampires, Eggers’ Orlack is still highly sexualized, in very disturbing ways. Somehow, despite distance and circumstance, Orlack’s spirit seduced and defiled Ellen in her youth. She hoped her love for Hutter would redeem her, but the vampire will not let her go easily.

Regardless, fans know what to expect when Orlack’s trunks arrive on the decimated ship on which they sailed. However, Eggers emphasizes the rats, worthy of “Three Skeleton Key,” which disembark from the derelict vessel, spreading pestilence throughout the city. Conditions get so bad, Prof. Sievers reluctantly consults his slightly disgraced former mentor, Prof Von Franz (a.k.a. Dr. Bulwer, a.k.a. Prof. Van Helsing), who seems to secretly understand the situation more than he lets on.

By horror movie standards, Eggers’ Nosferatu is absolutely gorgeous looking. In addition to Murnau’s original, Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke achieve a dreamlike vision that suggest the shimmering fantasia visions of Guy Maddin as an unlikely source of inspiration. The film is steeped in Old World gothic atmosphere. In fact, it revisited some of Murnau’s 1922 locations.

Regardless, Bill Skarsgard is amazing and rather frightening to behold, as the demonic Orlok. By now, he could be considered the Doug Jones of leading men. His presence is ferocious, to the point of outright viciousness. Yet, there is still a seductiveness to Orlok’s grotesqueness.

Of course, the perfectly cast Willem Dafoe is jolly good fun to watch unleashing his inner Peter Cushing as the brilliant but erratic Von Franz. Honestly, Ralph Ineson has yet to get the credit he deserves as a horror all-star, but he is every bit Dafoe’s equal playing the sharp-tempered Sievers.

Renfield, Co-Starring Nic Cage & Shohreh Aghdashloo

You can't say Dracula’s familiar never got any recognition, because Alice Cooper wrote a ballad to Dwight Fry, who played the nervous bug-eater in the classic Bela Lugosi film. However, this will be the first time he carried his own film. Of course, the master does not take kindly to his attempts to assert his independence in Chris McKay’s Renfield, which opens today nationwide.

Having just survived another encounter with vampire hunters, Dracula is looking more like his old Max Schreck self, but worse. They have found a new lair in New Orleans, where Robert Montague Renfield is supposed to nurse him back to his full power, once again. However, he goes a bit off-script when he stumbles across a support group for people trapped in toxic co-dependent relationships. Renfield can definitely relate, so he starts preying on their manipulative narcissistic tormentors, instead of the innocents his master craves.

Renfield really goes rogue when he crosses paths with Rebecca Quincy, one of the few honest cops in New Orleans. Using the super strength and agility he gains from eating bugs (one of the few benefits of being a familiar) saves Quincy from a hit squad dispatched by the Lobo crime family. At first, she considers Renfield a hero, but then she connects him to Dracula’s victims. Despite her reservations, Renfield and Quincy will have to work together when Dracula forges a self-serving alliance with the Lobos.

Despite a considerable amount of gore, Renfield is definitely played for laughs, but its blood spurting gags are usually pretty funny. Yet, McKay and screenwriter Ryan Ridley (working off Robert Kirkman’s concept) show a lot of affinity and affection for the classic Universal Dracula films. The early flashbacks superimpose Nic Cage’s Dracula and Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield over scenes from the 1931 Lugosi classic. The score also incorporates excerpts of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, just like Tod Browning’s film. Plus, what look like snippets of deleted scenes are recycled and given an early silent cinema look for Renfield’s closing credits.

Surely, Cage appreciated those touches. According to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is his favorite film—and everyone that meta-comedy is more truth than fiction. Renfield is also set in his hometown of New Orleans, but viewers should understand they cannot just assume there will be open tables at Café du Monde, like Quincy does.

True History of the Kelly Gang: Brooding with Ned

In 1906, Ned Kelly was the subject of what is considered the very first feature length film (Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang). He has been subsequently portrayed by the likes of Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger, so nobody can say his story is untold. However, some films are more accurate than others. Director Justin Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant strive for historical and psychological authenticity with their historically-informed adaptation of Peter Carey’s biographical novel, True History of the Kelly Gang, which releases today on VOD and opens old school at the Ocala and Mission Tiki 4 Drive-Ins.

Ned Kelly’s childhood was awful, as viewers will see and see and see again. His father was emotionally distant and largely incapable of providing for the family, whereas his mother was an Australian Lady Macbeth. Eventually, she “apprenticed” Kelly to the infamous Harry Power and then told him to man-up when he came running back, appalled by the bushranger’s violence. At last he learned a trade.

Frankly, the first act of True History is a grubby endurance test for viewers, but things pick up when Kelly comes of age and into his own. Initially, the prodigal Kelly resists the outlaw ways of his family, but his is forced into crime by circumstances and the villainy of Constable Fitzpatrick, with whom Kelly was formerly on (warily) friendly terms. The rest is violent history.

Although Kurzel and Grant generally side with those who see Kelly as a Robin Hood rebel instead of those (largely English) who disparage him as a cutthroat, they still drain the heroism out of his story. Instead, we get a naturalistic, proletarian Kelly. This a gritty, dank, and dirty looking movie, to a fault, but it still covers the major bases of Kelly’s life. Kurzel also displays a bit of a punk rock aesthetic that gives the film a slightly more contemporary vibe.

George MacKay (from 1917 and particularly impressive in For Those in Peril) is perfectly cast as Kelly. He is not huge of stature, but his wiry physicality and burning intensity create a palpable sense of dangerous instability on-screen. Surprisingly, Essie Davis is even fiercer as Mother Ellen Kelly.

Tribeca ’16: Equals

In the future, employee fraternization will be strictly forbidden. The entire world will be a “safe place” because all emotions will be “switched-off” at birth. Unfortunately, Silas has contracted “Switched-On Syndrome,” or “the Bug.” As a result, he has it bad for his co-worker, whom he also suspects is similarly afflicted. All love is forbidden and hurts like the dickens in Drake Doremus’s Equals (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Instead of Big Brother, the drones of this Collective are constantly inundated with PSAs designed to maintain public order. Silas has what still ought to be a cool job working as an illustrator, but he constantly asks Nia unnecessary questions about her stories. That makes her uncomfortable, perhaps too uncomfortable. It turns out Nia is indeed a “hider,” who secretly tries to control her SOS symptoms to avoid being ostracized like Silas, who admitted Maoist-style to his stage-one condition.

Silas and Nia soon commence a reckless, highly illegal love affair. He also gets some understanding and practical advice from an underground support group led by Jonas and Bess. The latter will be especially handy to know, since she is a hider working at the Collective’s dreaded Health and Safety Department. Inevitably, Silas and Nia are discovered, at which point Equals becomes a dystopian riff on Romeo & Juliet.

Granted, we have seen this severe future before, but maybe we need to see it again, because we keep forgetting how much freedom we sacrifice when we demand absolute safety from the government. The Switched-Off science of Equals might be speculative, but its implications are already with us. Doremus and his location scouts also help freshen things up with some strikingly neo-futuristic backdrops, including the I.M. Pei designed Miho Museum in Japan and Singapore’s Marina Barrage and Henderson Wave Bridge. If Kristen Stewart fans start making Equals pilgrimages, they might actually learn a little something about modernist architecture and Asian art.

Of course, probably Doremus’ most inspired strategic decision was casting Stewart and Nicholas Hoult as a couple trying to hide their emotions. Presumably, his direction amounted to “be yourselves.” They look perfect together, as if you could stick them on a dystopian wedding cake in World on a Wire or Gattica. Fortunately, Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver are reliably engaging as Jonas and Bess. Evidently, when an all-powerful collective starts bleaching the human spirit you can still trust Australians. Unfortunately, Claudia Kim is ridiculously under-employed as the PSA voice of the Collective.

In retrospect, the relative reserve of Doremus’s conclusion is rather fitting, even if the optimism is forced. Regardless, it is a stylish and arguably somewhat timely return to the tightly regimented future 1984 and Metropolis warned of decades ago. Recommended for fans of anti-utopian and relationship-driven science fiction, Equals screens again this afternoon (4/21), as a Viewpoints selection of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.