Just found out that Nosferatu was speaking in Dacian with Ellen, not Latin!! That's honestly even better, I can't believe the amount of research he did for this movie.

Also, after filming I heard some people are saying Nosferatu "groomed" Ellen??! Y'all 😂 It's not meant to be romantic, and Nosferatu represents death's lure on her, not an actual person. Do people not understand metaphors anymore?

I remember reading in a book of folklore as a child that a naked virgin on a horse will always lead to a vampire. My childhood self was ecstatic to see that scene since it was something that made my friend and me laugh for years.

When the doctor said you have to know evil to defeat evil,  I think often we need to have faced certain demons in order to empathize with others’ demons.

Robert Eggers is really into occultism and history, and it really shows in his movies. His next movie will probably be a medieval piece or a biopic of Rasputin. Either way I'm in

Willem Dafoe's characters is Swiss and named von Franz, just like Marie Louise von Franz, the swiss student of Jung who carried on his studies of alchemy and fairy tales after his death. In the film von Franz says "if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists". The first step in doing shadow work.
I loved all the jungian references in the film. Great video.

Really appreciate your take on this from a psychological perspective. I want to take the shadow/depression concept a step further. When I saw this movie, I had a very strong sense that Nosferatu was, among other things, a metaphor for CSA. People who suffer from this trauma often have nightmares abstracting their abuse into monsters, experience hypersexuality in combination with intense shame, depression, and somatic symptoms as well (represented in her seizures). Traumas at a young age can also "thin the veil" between the person and the unseen. The way she talks about having been visited by him as a child, being found naked, referring to him as her "shame," her hypersexuality, her simultaneous attraction and repulsion and sexual attachment to Nosferatu, etc. just felt so indicative to me. The marriage helped to lessen the pull of that trauma through love and creating a new attachment/dependency as a distraction. But without that distraction, when she was left to her own thoughts again, the memories returned. In this interpretation, one could see the ending as her actually integrating her trauma instead of running from it. I definitely want to see it again because I feel like there's so much this story can represent. It was so stunning.

Rose-Lily Depp completely stole this movie. A+. A beautiful reinterpretation of the original with a dash of Stoker thrown in.

I loved the film, and Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz said it best when he said that had they lived in any other time, Ellen would have been seen as a priestess or similar religious figurehead instead of a social nuisance. Her connection to that other world wouldn't have been dismissed so quickly, which fits many folk horror films I've seen. In many ways, this, more than the prior iterations, can be seen as a feminist film. Eggers announced that an extended cut is on the way and I'm very much into seeing it.

It's nice to hear a perspective that isn't focused on the (admittedly brilliant) technical elements. I read Count Orlok a little differently - as a metaphor for her shame and guilt over her unfulfilled, repressed ,and pathologized sexual desires. In this reading, the embrace of the count at the end is the embrace of these desires, guilt, and shame within her, ultimately killing both that shame and guilt and the version of herself that was ruled by them.

Which is all to say this is a rich text that has the flexibility for different viewers to extract lots of different meanings from it. And I really appreciate the willingness to explore the movie from a psychological and literary perspective, rather than the thuddingly literal interpretations that dominate YouTube.

I can see it as a metaphor for deperssion and suicide, Orlok is something that she's running from, denying, pushing away until she eventually just gives in to it. Ellen sacrifices herself in what seems like a hopeless situation. It's framed as a bitter-sweet ending, like, she saved everyone, but you can't help but wonder if there was another way that didn't end in her death. I can also see it as her facing her demons, I really liked when the professor says that in ancient times Ellen would have been a high priestess, and maybe she took that to heart and thought about what a priestess would do in order to save the masses from a demon and decided the best course of action was to offer herself up to the monster.  I genuinely really liked the relationship between Ellen and Thomas, it felt kind of rare to see in a horror movie lol, they were just a sweet little couple who genuinely loved each other and did everything they could to protect each other. This made me even sadder when she died lol. But it kind of correlates to a suicide, where the person commiting the act may think they're saving the loved ones around them, yet the people they leave behind now have to pick up the pieces, what is Thomas going to do? He promised to protect her and he failed, now what? We're left to wonder how Thomas moves on without Ellen, and yes she saved him and everyone, but at what cost? Poor Thomas has to soldier on without his love 😢. All in all, I freaking loved this movie, I love robert eggars and the cinematographer Jarin Blaschke should be very VERY proud of himself! It scared me and made me feel seen as a lady with an anxiety disorder, just got the film nerd in me so damn excited, it's probably my favorite movie to come out in recent years. Just a beautiful work of art.

The ending to me symbolized her embracing the shadow from within that is created in humans, and the purifying sunlight of consciousness killing or "freeing" them both in a cruel depiction. As it (the shadow within) eats her alive, she allows it to in a moment where up till the end she detests it while shes "awake" or "conscious" i love how it touches on actual esoteric knowledge subjects, i loved ur video on this so much <3

One of the things that made this Nosferatu reinterpretation symbolic is that Orlok is meant to be a representation of Evil in the world. I saw a theory that the reason he had this mustache is not just that it references both the book version and Vlad Tepes, but its to emphasize that he once was human and every horrible action he's committed manifested himself into this monster and everyone who fears him is ironically looking into a dark ugly hideous part of ourselves. He also is the embodiment of Plagues/War/Famine/etc. since "Orlok means "War" in Dutch. Since Ellen knows what she's up against, she's willing to sacrifice herself to save the world from suffering. So in a way, she became a savior figure and a hero. Because both the original 1922 version and the Herzog version did it before, its very rare to have the Innocent Maiden character have agency and bravery in a Gothic Vampire story.

The historical ideas and “treatments” for what Ellen was going through still ring true to this day. The “you’re being hysterical” or “you’re being dramatic; nothing bad is going to happen” still happens. Honestly, she was reminding me of people with bipolar disorder and the hardships they go through with their loved ones and themselves.

He truly makes art.

Regarding the horse scene: i've read somewhere that this was an 'actual' test to see where an undead was buried, wherein a virgin (usually a little boy, here Eggers takes some artistic liberty) rode a horse around the burial grounds and wherever the horse would falter and act nervously, there the ubdead was believed to have been buried

Wow. I've been watching random Nosferatu reviews, and yours popped up in my feed. To my surprise, I got way more than a review. The title is kind of selling this video short (maybe "Romanian Occult Expert Analyzes Nosferatu?"). I'm kind of shocked someone could do such a complete and well synthesized analysis like this so quickly after the movie released, and with such detailed and specific knowledge. You're very well-read, intelligent, and passionate, and it shows. Keep it up!

I loved the fact that she's kind of a priestess that channels the demon, but she finally gets to be strong enough to save up some space in her body for her true essence. I loved that in order to free herself, it was required from her to take a stand in her own truth so that she could differentiate from the demon (this was a crucial step in my own individuation path too).
Also, this film made me think about ancient virgin-sacrifices as a way to relieve instincts and violence through the body of a young innocent woman who could welcome them inside of her with total empathy and kindness.

He is also my favorite working director! I've been looking forward to Nosferatu for so long and it did not disappoint!

4:25 I'm pretty sure the virgin on a horse was a symbolic representative of the role Ellen plays. The "willing maiden" going to the vampire so he can be vanquished.  Note she's similar to Ellen's actress as well, save that Ellen keeps getting paler throughout the movie.  To me that hallucination(??) was like a prophetic warning he didn't have the knowledge to comprehend.

Given that Nosferatu and Ellen's consumation represents suicide, could the opening scene of her begging for someone to save her, and then her convulsing upon her first meeting with Nosferatu, be interpreted as her first "attempt"? Especially since later she mentions that she was at an extreme low at that time. Interesting and informative video!