Nosferatu: It sucks

Nosferatu (2024) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, graphic nudity and sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Watching paint dry would be preferable to enduring this turgid, overcooked slog.

 

In fairness, writer/director Robert Eggers gets points for atmosphere. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke definitely maximizes the eerie settings concocted by production designer Craig Lathrop. (That said, much of the film is too damn dark.)

 

Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) and Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) eventually
realize that particularly drastic measures will be required, if they're to have any chance
of defeating the vampire in their midst.

Alas, these opulently sinister backdrops are ill-served by a somnambulant cast that appears to wade through thick glue at all times, delivering lines with breathy pauses in between each word ... particularly true in the case of the title monster, who wheezes through every labored syllable, like he’s battling the world’s worst chest cold.

That affectation undoubtedly was intended to sound scary, but Eggers misses “scary” by a Carpathian mile.

 

His film has an intriguing legacy. 1922’s Nosferatu was plagiarized from Bram Stoker’s Dracula; director F.W. Murnau and scripter Henrik Galeen stole the plot and characters, changing names and relocating the story to their native Germany, in order to evade copyright issues. The ploy didn’t work; Stoker’s heirs sued, and the court ruled that all copies of the film be destroyed.

 

They missed a few, and Murnau’s film now is deservedly hailed as an early silent masterpiece that birthed the horror genre; the appearance of star Max Schreck’s Count Orlok also established a template for vampire makeup. 

 

Aside from the numerous legitimate adaptations of Stoker’s novel during the subsequent century, Nosferatu was remade by director Werner Herzog in 1979, with Klaus Kinski as the title vampire. Francis Ford Coppola’s handling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in 1992, also tipped a fang to Murnau.

 

Eggers’ new film borrows from all of the above, while focusing mostly on Murnau’s setting and characters. Eggers also employs shadows, often of a menacing hand, just as Murnau did. And, as befits our modern era, this film more explicitly emphasizes the lurid sexual eroticism that fuels much of the vampire mythos.

It Chapter Two: Two much of a good thing

It Chapter Two (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, profanity, highly disturbing violent content and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.6.19

This impressively creepy chiller delivers a relentless 100 minutes of gruesome, appalling, terrifying, look-between-your-fingers heart-stoppers.

Having made their way into the heart of Evil's lair, our heroes — from left, Bev (Jessica
Chastain), Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) and Ben (Jay Ryan) — are confronted by yet another
in an endless wave of ookie-spooky monstrosities.

Director Andy Muschietti and scripter Gary Dauberman leave no horror movie cliché neglected — no phobia unexploited — in their handsomely mounted, atmosphere-drenched conclusion to Stephen King’s 1986 best-seller.

Unfortunately, this film runs 169 minutes.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re discussing chocolate milk shakes or cinematic shocks; indulge too much, and the result simply becomes bland.

Which is ironic, because the best part of 2017’s It was the clever way in which Muschietti and his writers — Dauberman was assisted that time by Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga — stripped away the over-written dead flesh of King’s 1,138-page exercise in diminishing returns. With this second “half” of King’s saga, they’ve succumbed to the same self-indulgent excess.

Quite a pity. Particularly since the first two acts are — no question — macabre and terrifying at every turn.

Doesn’t matter what irrationally frightens or repulses you; Muschietti and Dauberman tap into it. Spiders? Claustrophobia? Disgusting flying bugs? Long, dark hallways? Slithery, worm-like nasties? Naked old people?

Clowns?

Clowns with massive, jaw-stretching, needle-sharp teeth? (The better to eat you with, my dear…)

There’s actually much to admire in this grim fantasy’s concluding installment, starting with an ensemble of well-cast actors who persuasively feel like grown-up versions of the first film’s adolescent heroes. Dauberman also manages the clever feat of integrating this sequel with its predecessor’s events, while simultaneously making it a coherent stand-alone experience for anybody unfamiliar with that 2017 entry. (Likely no more than one or two of you, but still…)

It: A horrific good time

It (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for bloody violence, frequent profanity and crude behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.8.17

This one has teeth.

Literally.

Having determined that their supernatural tormentor's home base is the very-very-very
creepy haunted house at the outskirts of town, Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) advises an
all-for-one-and-one-for-all assault: a suggestion met with incredulous unwillingness by,
from left, Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Richie (Finn Wolfhard), Bev (Sophie Lillis),
Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) and Mike (Chosen Jacobs)

Director Andy Muschietti’s handling of Stephen King’s It is that rarest of creatures: a film adaptation that is superior to its source novel.

Despite being undeniably scary, King’s 1986 chiller is a bloated, self-indulgently over-written mess at 1,138 pages: a slog even for the author’s most dedicated fans. Scripters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman have pared down the book quite deftly, discarding the parallel narratives and retaining only the (far superior) kid-centric half of the saga.

The result plays like a coming-of-age blend of Stand By Me and TV’s Stranger Things, albeit far nastier ... as befits the storyline. Muschietti and his writers retained the essential plot beats from King’s novel, while accelerating the thrills and chills by subjecting the key characters — and us viewers — to a relentless barrage of impressively scary/creepy tableaus.

This campaign of terror is orchestrated by one of King’s finest creations: Pennywise the Clown, played here with viscerally shocking intensity by Bill Skarsgård. Between his, ah, behavior, and the way Muschietti choreographs said activities, impressionable viewers likely won’t sleep well for weeks.

I don’t say this lightly. Since 1979’s Alien, I could count — on the fingers of one hand — the films that have well and truly frightened me. Muschietti’s adaptation of It makes the list, and with good reason: He understands the true nature of fear. Unlike too many contemporary horror filmmakers content to repulse viewers, short-term, by wallowing in gore, Muschietti messes with our minds ... which is as it should be.

Anticipating the worst — not knowing precisely what’s coming, albeit having a dismayed notion — plants a much more powerful anxiety bomb in our nervous little heads. Muschietti plays us like a fiddle.

Which is not to say that this It is without its gruesome moments. Hardly. Muschietti bares his atmospheric fangs right from the start, which (of course!) leaves us unsettled for the rest of the ride.

That’s only half of the equation. This film’s success also derives from the exceptional work by its young ensemble cast, which brings a level of emotional resonance — even poignancy — that is likely to surprise folks. Genuine pathos in a horror flick? That’s an unusual combination ... and that’s precisely why the story grabs us so persuasively.

Atomic Blonde: A noisy bomb

Atomic Blonde (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for strong violence, nudity, sexuality and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.28.17

British author Antony Johnston obviously grew up reading John Le Carré, because his 2012 graphic novel — The Coldest City, with moody art by Sam Hart — is laden with the sort of spycraft that George Smiley would have recognized: bleak cynicism, operatives known only by code names, squabbling between Intelligence Agency factions, cut-outs, traitors and double-crosses.

It's just another day in the office for Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), as she tries
to prevent KGB thugs from reaching — and killing — the defecting East German
intelligence officer under her protection.

The story takes place in Berlin in November 1989, immediately before and after East and West are unified. An undercover MI6 agent is killed trying to bring invaluable information back to the British: a list believed to identify every espionage agent working on both sides of the wall. Veteran undercover operative Lorraine Broughton is sent to Berlin, to retrieve the list and identify her colleague’s killer; her task is complicated by the chaos of mass demonstrations calling for unification, while KGB loyalists resist with increasing viciousness.

Definitely a hook on which to hang a slick, thoughtful espionage saga.

Too bad director David Leitch and scripter Kurt Johnstad didn’t see it that way.

They’ve essentially re-cast 2014’s loathsomely violent John Wick with a female lead, and the briefest of nods to genre spycraft. (No surprise there, since Leitch was an uncredited co-director on the first Wick.) The distinction is immediately obvious with a name change — Atomic Blonde — that more accurately reflects star Charlize Theron’s luminously white hairstyle, and the luxuriously wild outfits that she wears so well: most of them also vibrant white, with striking black accoutrements. Costume designer Cindy Evans, take a bow.

The Berlin setting is persuasively reproduced by production designer David Scheunemann; cinematographer Jonathan Sela deserves equal credit for gritty street scenes, strobe-lit nightclubs and shadow-laden noir tableaus. No question: This film looks terrific, and feels like the ideal backdrop for cloak-and-dagger subterfuge.

But Leitch has no finer sensibilities. His film is flashy trash: violent, tawdry and depressingly nihilistic. Midway through this two-hour exercise in brutality, it becomes impossible to keep track of who’s good, bad or in between; Johnstad’s script keeps changing its mind, seemingly on every other page.