Nosferatu

I just got home from a visit to the cinema with my eldest daughter - to watch “Nosferatu” - a new version of the story inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although I’ve known of the original movie for years - it’s one of the earliest horror movies - I didn’t know the full story until earlier this evening when curiosity got the better of me, and I fell down the internet rabbit hole in search of truth. It turns out the director of the original movie changed some names, but otherwise remained close enough to the source material for the estate of Bram Stoker to summon rather a lot of lawyers - who ordered the movie destroyed. The only reason we still know about Nosferatu is because a few copies survived the cull. The new version was properly dark. Forbidding. Sinister. It wasn’t really shocking or blood-thirsty - and didn’t get inside your head in the same way that Gary Oldman’s Prince Vlad did thirty years ago - but it was still very, very good. We talked about it all the way home - always the sign of a good movie. The story is about much more than a tale of ancient evil - it’s also about fear, loneliness, and those that prey on the vulnerability of others. Even though I don’t believe in the occult, stories like Nosferatu always seem to unlock a healthy fear of “fucking about and finding out”. You’ll never see me go anywhere near ritual objects, incantations, or spell books. Willem Dafoe’s aged professor summed my concerns with one line: “Science… it blinds us to the darkness all around”.