You know the story of Dracula. A Transylvanian count wants to buy land in the west, a young real estate agent visits him to finalise the sale and has a bad time. The count travels to the west to wreak havoc (and to seduce its good women) but is foiled by a band of men (and one woman).

F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film, Nosferatu, is an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. As such, the names and locations are not those that readers will expect: Count Dracula is Count Orlok, the real estate agent Jonathan Harker is Thomas Hutter and his young wife is not Mina Harker, but Ellen Hutter. The tale is also transposed from London at the turn of the century to the fictional German town of Wisborg in the late 1830s.

The changes were, however, not enough, and Stoker’s widow sued for copyright infringement. She won, and a court ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. Thankfully many survived, and now Nosferatu is considered a masterpiece of cinema and a template for horror films.

American director Robert Eggers has taken on the tale, bringing his unique approach to sound and colour to the silent tale. The result is a beautiful film brimming with slow terror and unease.

The latest in a long line of horror movies marketed as alternative Christmas classics (“succumb to the darkness Christmas 2024”, reads one teaser poster), Nosferatu is pitched as an antidote to the relentless brightness and cheer that otherwise permeates seasonal media. It delivers on this promise. Chilly, desolately beautiful sets and costumes (courtesy of designers Craig Lathrop and Linda Muir) are lit, shadowed and shot to bleak perfection........

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