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Nosferatu
(2024)

Director – Robert Eggers – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 132m

*****

Unaware a woman has unwittingly summoned Count Orloc, her husband is sent to the latter’s castle in Transylvania – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, January 1st 2025

The German expressionist silent film Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) has been described as setting the cinematic template for the horror film. Broadly speaking, it’s an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, with names changed for the purposes either of connecting to the German audience or avoiding copyright issues. While there have been numerous Dracula movie adaptations and spin-offs over the years, remakes of the 1922 film are comparatively few and far between; prior to the current film, Werner Herzog notably made Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Eggers is a great admirer of the 1922 film, and originally planned to remake it after The Witch (2015). It’s not hard to see why. His films have about them a terrible sense of dread, of dire events about to occur. Like F.W. Murnau, he is a great visual stylist (although the silent film industry of the 1920s was very different to the far more sophisticated sector of today). The film has had time to marinate in his head for the best part of a decade, which has probably done the project no harm at all.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Silent Night

Director – Camille Griffin – 2020 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

**

Families of old school friends gather for Christmas at a country house knowing they will die as a deadly mist envelops the planet – out in cinemas on Friday, December 3rd

Nell (Keira Knightley) and Simon (Matthew Goode) prepare to have her old school friends over for Christmas at her mother’s isolated house in the country. Their son Art (Roman Griffin Davies from Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi, 2019) helps mum prepare the dinner while his two twin brothers Thomas and Hardy (his real life brothers Gilby and Hardy Griffin Davies) play on the PlayStation rather than get in the bath as they’ve been told. Simon tells the boys they are allowed to swear, but not to be rude to Kitty (Davida McKenzie), daughter of Sandra (Annabelle Wallis) and Tony (Rufus Jones from The Ghoul, Gareth Tunley, 2016), even though she’s known to be difficult. Art fails this injunction spectacularly, swearing at her when she decides to watch his brothers get out of the bath, and is forced to apologise.

Additional guests include lesbian couple Bella (Lucy Punch, writer of Judy And Punch, 2019, Mirrah Foulkes) and Alex (Kirby Howell-Baptiste from Killing Eve, TV series, creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 2018-22) plus school heartthrob James (Sope Dirisu from His House, Remi Weekes, 2020) with his young American girlfriend Sophie (Lily-Rose Depp) in tow.… Read the rest