Opening the vampire movie on Christmas Day wasn’t only a coy marketing ploy. It was the point.
Written and read by Josh Larsen
Clips courtesy of Focus Features
References/sources found here: https://thinkchristian.net/nosferatu-and-the-absence-of-god
I’m writing this shortly before the darkest day of 2024: Dec. 21, winter solstice. It also happens to be just ahead of Christmas Day and the release of the year’s darkest movie: Nosferatu.I mean “darkest movie” literally. Written and directed by horror specialist Robert Eggers, this is a monster mash of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and just about every Dracula movie you’ve seen. Yet few of those films—even the ones in black and white—have been as drained of light and color as this Nosferatu. It’s as if blood has been sucked from the very images and they’ve been left to lie, lifeless, in the moonlight. On occasion, a candle or torch attempts to keep the decrepitness at bay, but such illumination is only temporary. Shadowy fog dominates most of the frames.There is potent theological resonance here, in that such darkness depicts a world that is absent the presence of God. This is the harrowing reality that Eggers’ movies present. His independent debut, 2016’s The Witch, features a pious colonial family, but their rigid beliefs offer no protection against the hag of the title (to say nothing of the goat that might just be a mouthpiece for the devil). His follow-up, The Lighthouse, follows two keepers of a small outpost in 1890s New England, but with its allusions to Poseidon and Prometheus, it might as well be unfolding in a purgatory governed by Greek mythology. (Unless, of course, it’s set in hell.) The Northman, a bloody retelling of a 12th-century Nordic legend, takes place in a pagan setting, where Christianity is an odd, faraway rumor about a god who is a “corpse, nailed to a tree.” The God of Christianity is often referred to in Eggers’ movies, but rarely, if ever, felt.
This has never been more explicit than in Nosferatu…
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Bravo 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
It’s not surprising, gothic horror is often meant to scare the “good Christian” of the time
What about the nuns? Their "faith" did help the protagonist.
I mean, what am i supposed to take away from this? Is it a subversion? Anti God?
I really appreciate the redemptive perspective of your review. Way more productive and enlightening than just flailing hands in despair that another “devilish movie has blasphemed Christmas.” Way to “take dominion””😊
I think there are much worse works done recently in Hollywood than this movie. This movie has references to Jacob and the Angel, to God fortifying people, and obviously to the light that destroys the darkness at the end of the film. It shows evil conquered, true evil, not just the “patriarchy” evil that Hollywood has spent the last decade trying to convince the general public of. Real evil. Demonic evil. Is God the emphasis of the movie? No. But I didn’t see it as anti-Christian either. I don’t think artists are compelled to make religious statements in their films, that’s not their job. Their job is to tell a story, hopefully an entertaining one, and in that I think this movie excels.
This reminds me of the guy who said Pokémon was satanic XD
Also, there was definitely no full absence of God in this movie. The characters all around are praying while the movie goes on. A more obvious scene is where the group of nuns prayed over one of the main characters to relinquish the evil spirit within him. Yes, Nosferatu is clearly the definition of pure evil and an entity that defies God, but that's the point of the movie. On top of that, the monster does not win in the end. It is conquered by sunlight, in which is always a representation of the power of God.
Christians need too stop acting like the popular girl in high school thinking everything that happens is around her existing. It was released on Chistmas cause it happens during Christmas, as simple as that.
I don't think God is totally absent from the movie. It's to me thematically about how post-Enlightenment, rational western culture can't respond to spiritual problems. The Orthodox nuns and Romani in Transylvania understand and know how to oppose the supernatural evil represented by vampires in the movie; the 19th century urban Germans don't, and Orlok explicitly says that's why he wants to move.
There's a similar dynamic with the doctors who see Reagan before the priests in The Exorcist being unable to understand or treat her possession, which I imagine was a direct influence on this movie
FOR ME , RED FLAGS WENT UP WHEN THE RELEASE DATE WAS " CHRIST"MAS.
Yeah, god is actually useless. You have to take action yourself
Ok, seriously? You've got an issue with a Norse warrior in a faithful movie about the 10th century based on the Icelandic sagas referring diminishingly to Jesus?That was light compared to what pagan accounts say about the beliefs of the Christians. I'll make it simple for you – Christianity had no place in the Northman because it was set in a world where Christianity wasn't present, before it was present and adopted. As for Nosferatu – the movie is explicitly, among other things, about a society which has rejected what it considers "superstitions", and thus has no spiritual wall against a darkness beyond rationality – including religion. The Romanian peasants actually do pretty well with their faith, and the Orthodox priest and nuns do release Thomas from the hold of Orlok, and repeatedly say he can't enter their holy ground (yay for positive Orthodox representation). I swear that's why people don't take your American flavors of Christianity seriously – a smattering of historical religious knowledge, an overdependence on Old Testament dramatics and pagan phobia and an axe to grind. Do better if you want a genuine space in seriously reviewing media according to your religious beliefs.
It's all part of the programming.
Duh… that's the point
Going to movies on Christmas is a modern, anti-Christ practice. They don't want you sitting around the table, talking to your family. They want you to line up for brainwashing.
You have proven that you don't understand the movie and its themes. God is present in this movie. All the Nosferatu movies have cristian themes
Kind of shocked at the amount of culture warring in the comments (esp the suggestion that this video is criticizing Eggers for not being kind to Christianity 🙃) but I finally saw the film last night and was glad to catch up with your review!
Christmas Day is a huge release date for auters. Scorcese dropped 'Wolf of Wall Street' on Xmas. Tarantino dropped 'The Hateful Eight' on Xmas. And Eggers did the same.
It's a great day to release monolithic films like this that won't have to battle the summer action/comedy slop. You are overthinking this, and overestimating how much other people care about your faith.
See, I was thinking Orlok was supposed to be an allegory for the god of the Old Testament.
I hope you will find the following interesting, especially in conception of Christianity.
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The Nosferatu vampire is commonly misunderstood as Dracula. But besides the movie is based on Stocker's novel, the vampire Orlok is based on Ukrainian historic figure, Pilyp Orlyk. He was Ivan Mazepa's trusted person and thus an ally for Carl XII of Sweden. Mazepa and Orlyk both were vassals of the House Romanov. After west of Russia was invaded by Carolus Rex and Russian Tzar's army suffered a major defeat near Narva, Ukrainian Getmans betrayed russian Tzar and pledged to emperor of Sweden. For such betrayal Mazepa and Orlyk were cursed by Orthodox Church's Liturgic Anathema*.
Peter the Great achieved victory in the Northern War.
Russian Tsardom has become the Russian Empire. The Viking King fled from Russia, severely wounded by a cossack in the Battle of Poltava, with a handful of Drabants, without an artillery and with most of the army became casualties. Mazepa has died in Ukrainian steppe, he was left behind and literally drained of blood by mass of fleas and lices. But there is a legend about Orlyk has became an Upyr. The vampire. An orthodox Church's curse touched him this way. Anathema is a thing feared in Russia until today, afaik. He ate his former friend Mazepa dry along with his retinue and fleed to Europe. According to people who were the last to see the Hetman in Budapest, he looked like an embittered, hunted madman, slowly degrading into smth feral and ill. A demon-possessed corpse, pityful remains of once proud and educated cossack leader. A traitor now is a living hell of himself, It was said. He was hiding in cemetery Cenotaphs, lived in abandoned crumbling houses of passed away commoners or in ashes of burned-down barns. Local townsfolk rumoured that mad Cossack was seen feeding on carrion or devoured freshly buried corpses. In winter he attacked cattle with his teeth, trying to warm himself with their blood. It was witnessed that he even dared to broke into a church window while some people listened there to a Liturgy of the Epiphany night, but immediately ran into the dark from there, wailing in confusion and grief, likely unable to endure the sight of the crucifixion and the smell of incense. When the Habsburg authorities wanted to find out if count Orlyk, once brilliantly graduated from the University of Vienna, did really fallen so low, the hetman had already disappeared without a trace.
*Anathema do not means death, but rather cutting an individual from salvation. He will be never released of his sins, he will never enter The kingdom of God.
Someone asked a nihilist "Did you see the movie?"
And the nihilist said, "What's the point? It doesn't matter"
People mistake faith for personal strength, personal righteousness and being "good enough." That's not faith. Faith is trusting in and relying on God.