Reactions visible to anyoneReactions visible to owner’s Close FriendsReactions only visible to youDraft entryVisible to anyone (with link)Visible to the member’s friends (with link)Only visible to you
It really had me going until it loses all its steam in the final minutes of the film.
After The Northman and this, Eggers has cemented his style in filmmaking that is undistinguishable from his use of shadows, his slow zooms into darkness, and down to his favourite use of a low reverberating voice that rolls their Rs. He even added Ralph Ineson for good measure.
Lily-Rose Depp is the easy standout here. Incredible work and took over the award for best possession acting of the year from Nell Tiger Free in The First Omen. Unfortunately, as great of a year Nicholas Holt seems to be having on paper, he was kind of just there in this, nothing to write home about, same as Aaron Taylor-Johnson. However Holt was able portray fear incredibly. Emma Corbin who has also been having an incredible year and creating whiplash with her range of character work also was not given much to do in this.
In the end I was pretty disappointed in the overall narrative of the film and expected more, especially in the direction it ends up going. The character design, as hyped as it was, was also a poor showing. Skarsgard is unrecognizable and puts on a great performance sure, but the design seemed pretty simple and didn’t much scream ‘Nosferatu’.
Eggers is an elite filmmaker who seems to be held back by lack of exciting narratives to work with. It felt like not enough was explored, yet it didn’t keep the ‘monster’ mysterious. It rushed to a conclusion that left me unsatisfied.
Still definitely worth to see and it is no slam on Eggers’ ability, but I expected more.
Letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we rely mostly on the support of our members to maintain our site and apps. Please consider upgrading to a Pro account—for less than a couple bucks a month, you’ll get cool additional features like all-time and annual stats pages (example), the ability to select (and filter by) your favorite streaming services, and no ads!