For people wanting a bit more horror on their Valentine’s Day, Peacock has a bloody good announcement for you: Robert Eggers’ hit film “Nosferatu” will begin streaming on the service on Feb. 21.
Eggers’ extended cut of “Nosferatu,” which was never seen in theaters before, will also be available on Peacock.
Bill Skarsgard stars as Count Orlok, aka the titular vampire in Eggers’ re-telling of the classic story. The cast also includes Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and more.
“Nosferatu” is nominated for four Academy Awards, including best cinematography, costume design, production design and makeup and hairstyling. At the BAFTA Awards, it’s up for the same four categories plus original music. It previously won best cinematography at the Critics’ Choice Awards and the National Board of Review.
“The costumes, the sets and the uncommonly elegant effects, all handsomely captured by Jarin Blaschke’s nearly colorless cinematography, combine to make ‘Nosferatu’ a sumptuously immersive viewing experience. Even so, the nightmare at the film’s center never quite works, as Eggers relies on amped-up music cues and unconventional editing in order to unnerve — and even then, the underlying metaphor isn’t clear. Though ‘Nosferatu’ recognizes classic anxieties of sexual predation so central to vampire lore (to see Orlok bent over Thomas and later Ellen, one can hardly deny the carnal symbolism of his appetite), images of Satan worship and plague-carrying rats dilute the impact,” Variety’s chief film critic Peter DeBruge wrote in his review. “Here, the vampire has been defanged, relying instead on long claws that cast ominous shadows over the land. Appearing night after night until he gets his way, Orlok comes across as a mangy ex-boyfriend determined to steal Ellen’s virtue, not some all-powerful supernatural figure to be feared. For Eggers, it was a mistake to put so much attention into aesthetics, only to abandon the qualities that once made Orlok so iconic.”
