Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu treats the Nosferatu story as IP with no desire to adapt or understand what makes the source work. It's just using the source story as a means to administer endorphin rushes when you hear someone's name or finally get to See That Face. When Herr Knock said "His name is Count... Orlok..." to end a scene I knew we were in trouble. When Orlok's face was out of focus for no real reason other than to preserve a later face reveal I fully turned on the movie.
The actual core where a movie should be is empty or at the very least clumsy. Where there should be emotional weight behind Ellen's arc, there's just a flat character and exposition, no interiority. Friedrich is a particularly egregious plot device character who rarely behaves rationally. Willem Dafoe mostly escapes unscathed, he can make the lousy writing work through sheer chops in ways the others can't.
And Dafoe does get some of the very worst dialogue - there's hamfisted attempt to shoehorn in relevant themes for today by putting it directly in the character's mouths, so you're sure to catch it. Something about needing to recognize evil as evil before you can fight it. Eggers makes him say it twice too, in case you didn't get it the first time.
There's also an attempt to show the way Ellen is subject to sexism, which is an interesting angle. The problem is, the main person who believes her is an alchemist, while the people who are the most sexist are in the side of science. There's a scene where Ellen confronts Friedrich on his bullshit, but he's arguing that plague is the main concern, not a supernatural danger. We just had a pandemic where misinformation was a massive problem. So both sides are right? It's all very muddled.
At least with the visuals, there's some competence in the craft. Particularly neat is a shot with the shadow of Nosferatu’s hand flying across a city at night. Some of the horror sequences are really effective, while some are pretty lacking in tension. Throughout, it's a pretty fully realized gothic world with some effective ideas and shots. But even there, sometimes there isn't a whole lot of intent behind the craft - the camera is just moving to make you think “wow that's a cool shot”. It's a larger problem of a movie that's trying to impress you rather than immerse you. And I'm not all that impressed.
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