It’s odd to issue a spoiler warning for director Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” given that it’s a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film of the same name, which itself was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Even if you haven’t seen Murnau’s silent masterpiece, you still likely know the contours of its story, and you’ve seen images of actor Max Schreck dressed up as Murnau’s titular vampire. The pointy ears. The claws. The bucktooth fangs. Schreck’s portrayal was a terrifying (and also plainly antisemitic) visual manifestation of Stoker’s now legendary monster. The first, and best, horror movie icon. Hard to spoil a story that virtually everyone knows by heart.

But the fact that the 2024 “Nosferatu” was directed by Eggers has given it an air of anticipation it otherwise wouldn’t have garnered. Eggers has only directed three other movies in his career (“The Witch,” “The Lighthouse” and “The Northman”), but his gorgeous cinematography and his painstaking attention to historical details has made him one of the few directors in modern showbiz to not only have a distinct voice behind the camera, but also the creative freedom to use it. So this isn’t just some random mercenary director hired to reboot Murnau’s original movie for easy money. This is a real artist at work, which means that the excitement surrounding this “Nosferatu” has been less about the story than what Eggers’ planned on doing with it.

This is especially true of the main character (played this time by Bill Skarsgard, known best as Pennywise from the “IT” films), whose full visage wasn’t given away in any of the promotional materials, including the trailer. I saw that trailer. I saw the olde timey title fonts, the forbidding castle, and the silhouette of the monster, and I thought to myself, “Oh yeah, I can’t wait to see what this Dracula looks like.”

Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen Hutter and Emma Corrin as Anna Harding in director Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.”

Adéla Hesová........

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