To say that Robert Eggers has brought us the worst of the mainline “Nosferatu” features (which is to say, excluding those in which Klaus Kinski wanders on his own to Venice) isn’t necessarily the derogatory designation implied by such a statement; F. W. Murnau and Wener Herzog have simply left such massive boots for any eager artist to fill. To say that “Nosferatu” constitutes Eggers’s worst film is, also, not quite a derogatory statement, but rather a testament to the towering artistic vision that the historically inclined auteur-in-the-making has stamped onto the scene over the course of his still-brief career.

With all that being said… Yes, Eggers’s “Nosferatu” is both the worst of the mainline “Nosferatu” features and the worst of the director’s own, but not for a lack of either style or reverence. Indeed, “Nosferatu” demonstrates, above all else, a continued honing of Eggers’s skills as a craftsman, marrying his penchant for historical accuracy with occult-like imagery applied to one of the most famed narrative frameworks to ever merit such treatment. For those of the belief that craft is an end in itself, more than justifying another crack at such immortal material, then Eggers has you covered; for those looking beyond the shape of the specter, the image on the wall may appear to shrink somewhat under the scrutiny of candlelight.

The story of “Nosferatu”—really, the unauthorized story of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”—is one retold so often and with such fidelity (at least with regards to this particular offshoot of Stoker knockoffs) that the only details that tend to change are the moderately adjusted character names and the fresh faces embodying them. Eggers, in an attempt to veer at least somewhat from the beaten path, has opted to shift his focus most towards the gaze of Ellen Hutter (a shockingly show-stopping Lily-Rose Depp), a 19th-century German newlywed plagued, for years, by an unwanted desire for the decrepit Nosferatu (Bill Skarsgård… allegedly; the level of makeup work on display is so thorough in its camouflaging effect that you could tell me Nosferatu was played by anyone from Tilda Swinton to a resurrected Rasputin and I wouldn’t blink twice).

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