Nosferatu Ramblings

[zimzalabim]

 

Just after seeing Nosferatu (2024) my friend turned to me and said “I just couldn’t deal with how gross he was. Vampires are supposed to be sexy!” To which I wasn’t sure how to explain why that aspect of the film was kind of my favourite part without sounding like a complete freak. 

Full disclosure, perhaps I am a freak. I love when films combine themes of sex with horror, which is a sophisticated way of saying i like when weird and fucked up sex things happen. In film. IN FILM. Please stop running away. However, as much as I am a huge advocate for it, I do understand the aversion to it. It can be kind of a tough sell. On the other hand, I think that I absolutely would not have liked Nosferatu as much if Count Orlok had any kind of sex appeal. 

I saw a lot of discourse online about the meaning of this film before I even watched it. A lot of people (within my small internet bubble, at least) read Orlok and Ellen’s relationship as an allegory of abuse or assault. I understand this interpretation, and I think it’s a good one, Ellen’s nightmares and deep despair that everyone pushes under the rug, Orlok’s claiming of her despite her protest that she abhors him, threatening her into becoming his bride. It’s a bleak tale, when viewed from this angle. But I don’t think it’s the only way to look at the story. 

To me, Nosferatu is a story of repression, and I do not think it is wrong to view it as representative of sexual repression. However, I do also think that there is a little more to it than that.

Ellen has a loving husband, and yet she is consumed by this darkness, the very darkness from which she called to Orlok from. This darkness is, quite plainly, loneliness. She is desperately lonely, not because there is no one around her, but because she is oppressed and therefore so much of her is repressed. When we talk about repression, we usually mean sexual, which I think is what people are struggling with in looking at this film as a story of repression. Orlok is gross, he isn’t sexy, why would she desire him? But it is not that she desires him, or he desires her. In a way, he is her desire. Ellen wants to be able to show her emotions fiercely, she wants to love and be loved, she wants more from her existence than what is being offered. To want more as a woman is shameful, it is dirty, it is monstrous. 

Ellen and Thomas cannot fit themselves into the mould society has made for them, and they are shunned for it, asked to leave their friend’s house where they are staying. They have been rendered something other by Orlok, making them both slip outside of the tight gender roles. But they love each other! Sadly, love is not enough. The power of shame and the power of society is all consuming, and in order to restore the status quo, Ellen must eat her desire - and herself - alive. 

There’s so many films I want to talk about in the award season, and Nosferatu is one that just missed the award window, both by release date and by being a horror. But I really wanted to get some of my thoughts about it out there before I shift my focus entirely. Sometimes you need a film to be at least a little bit fresh in your mind to talk about it properly, and I didn’t want to lose that. 

So, before it decays in my memory to make way for all the Oscar bait: Nosferatu good. Go and watch it. (Especially if you like weird monster sex.)