The Inevitable Nosferatu Essay: Or 'Bonk, Go To Horny Jail.'
'Do you think this movie might be about sex???'
Spoilers for Nosferatu.
Introduction
‘We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open.’
- The Adage of Byrgenwerth, Bloodborne
As a long-time lover of vampire and vampire-adjacent stories, it was fairly inevitable that Nosferatu would hit me like a ton of bricks, and I feel very lucky to have caught it before it left cinemas. It is, in my opinion, one of the best films of the last decade, and as of right now it’s pretty much the definitive vampire film. Not only is it aesthetically incredible, but it is very sound and coherent, and uncompromising in depicting the vampire as a monster.
Although the critical response to the film has been very positive, there have also been some criticisms in circulation, which I would like to respond to here. In the process, I will be breaking down the film’s story and characterisation in detail, with a particular focus on symbolism.
A key point I want to dispute here is the (minority) perception that Nosferatu is a misogynistic work, built on ‘fear of female sexuality’ (to paraphrase the title of an essay which did numbers on here1). For me, this just doesn’t ring true. While there are certainly ‘monstrous-feminine’ aspects to Nosferatu, I think that focusing exclusively on this is too narrow an approach, and may result in tunnel vision.
To make sense of the film’s worldview, we need to examine Ellen’s character closely, particularly her relationship with society and the supernatural, and the extent to which she does or doesn’t exercise free will (which is a central question of the film). We also need to consider the film’s dark depictions of male desire, to contextualise its view of female desire.
Dramatis personae and synopsis
To give a quick outline of the story for those who haven’t seen it, it’s offbrand Dracula, and very faithful to the novel in many respects2. The main characters are:
Thomas Hutter - a young estate agent and newlywed, who is given the worst assignment imaginable. He has to go to Transylvania and do business with Count Orlok3.
Ellen Hutter - Thomas’ wife, who accidentally summoned Orlok some years ago by [checks notes] by being too horny, and is now being stalked by him. Has every mental illness.
The Hardings - Thomas’ old school friend Friedrich, now a wealthy businessman, with his wife Anna and two children. They take in Ellen while Thomas is away, and their lives rapidly become The Exorcist, but somehow even worse.
Count Orlok - gross vampire, black magician, and malevolent presence. Fixated on Ellen.
Herr Knock - Thomas’ employer, and Renfield knockoff (no pun intended). An agent of Orlok, would-be vampire, and full-time rat man.
Albin von Franz - scholar and occultist, banished from his university for being a bit too Alex Jones. Great value Van Helsing.
Doctor Sievers - atmospheric exposition and plot-moving-along guy.
So, the gist is that Orlok travels to Wisburg to claim Ellen, where he unleashes a plague on the city. In the process, we learn three accounts of the vampire’s nature:
Thomas hears from nuns that Orlok was once a black magician4.
Von Franz describes Orlok as a type of demon associated with death and destruction, which is embodied by the plague he brings.
Orlok’s own explanation is that ‘I am an appetite, nothing more,’ i.e. he is a manifestation of Ellen’s own desires.
These explanations aren’t mutually exclusive, and all combine into a fairly coherent picture of what Orlok is: he says that he had slept in the earth for centuries before being woken by Ellen, so he is ancient5, per the black magician story, but is presently animated and given life by Ellen’s influence. His undeath is the result of a demonic covenant, per Von Franz’s explanation and that of the nuns, which imbued him with the properties of the demon he made his pact with.
The close relationship between Ellen and Orlok, with the latter being (symbolically) a manifestation of Ellen’s repressed desires, is certainly linked to the Jungian concept of the shadow, with Orlok representing the hidden parts of a person’s psyche which are rejected as incompatible with the conscious self. This ties in neatly with a) his symbolic links to animals and atavism, and b) the fact that he is often shown as a shadow.
As such, the dominant and overriding aspect of Orlok isn’t death: it’s lust, which the film views as a force just as powerful, infectious and destructive as the plague he brings with him. It’s ultimately Orlok’s uncontrollable lust for Ellen that leads to his own destruction, as he is caught in the sunlight while still drinking her blood, and various extreme and disturbing lusts manifest in others throughout the film. Lust in Nosferatu is a contamination spread like the plague, which is seen in the cannibalistic antics of Knock, and more shockingly still in the grotesque fate of Friedrich Harding (more on this later).
It’s also worth noting that the film is deeply Freudian (and/or Jungian), for better or for worse. Like Freud, it is preoccupied with a) sex and b) the unconscious mind. Orlok, like Freddy Kreuger, assaults sleeping victims, communicates through dreams, and is an embodiment of both nightmare and unconscious desire6. Orlok’s association with dreams and the unconscious is very strong throughout the film, not only in his pursuit of Ellen, but also his power over Thomas, whose conscious volition is stripped from him at various times. Thomas is rooted to the spot as if in a nightmare when a ghostly carriage rushes towards him to bring him to Orlok’s castle, and there are moments when the vampire controls him through mesmerism, forcing Thomas to sign a contract and to open a door to admit him7. The boundaries between waking and sleeping are also blurred in an earlier scene in which Thomas witnesses a group of hunters exhume and stake a vampire. It seems as if this was a dream, yet he wakes with mud on his boots, and when he questions Orlok about it the vampire’s hostile response implies that what he saw was real.
More prominent, however, is Orlok’s influence on Ellen, which manifests through sleepwalking and (sexually suggestive) seizures and fits. The vampire constantly invades her dreams, yet there are also moments when the sleeping Ellen appears to influence him rather than the other way around. She is also entirely depicted as a sufferer of ‘female hysteria’, a purported condition that, for the sake of my own sanity (and yours, dear reader), I will not go into here8.
‘Fear of female sexuality’
On that note, it is certainly true that (disordered) female desire is a very prominent theme in the film - it would be hard to argue that Ellen Hutter is anything short of incandescently horny, and the film is about as subtle about that as a piano descending on the head of a cartoon character.
It’s also very plainly discussed by Von Franz, who says that Ellen is under a demonic influence, and such demons have power over those ‘whose animal functions are dominant’ (paraphrasing from memory). So, he’s basically saying that Ellen’s desires are what made her susceptible to Orlok and/or the unseen demon controlling Orlok.
This line undoubtedly soured some viewers’ feelings towards the film, as Von Franz is allowed to voice with authority what many (/most) today would consider an unacceptable viewpoint, which goes unchallenged and is clearly borne out through the plot. More importantly, he is here describing a character (Ellen) who is a symbolic (/literal) rape victim, and thus his explanation of her condition as a result of her own lust could be taken as an allegory for victim-blaming. The fact that Ellen’s relationship with Orlok is so ambivalent, and not entirely hostile, also feeds into this perception: she is not a ‘perfect victim’, having somewhat complicated feelings towards her abuser.
However, it’s important to recognise that the line pertains not only to Ellen, but also to several male characters in the film (see below), and whereas Ellen is ultimately able to overcome the demon’s influence, and is also framed as a victim of society, the same cannot be said for these men.
The Orlok-Ellen-Demon Triumvirate
Von Franz’s explanation also helps to set up the complex dynamic between three figures: Ellen, Orlok, and the unseen demon9, whose presence is felt throughout the film, and appears to influence both Ellen and Orlok. These entities are in nigh-constant psychic communication with each other throughout the film, and it’s very unclear where one personality ends and the next begins.
Ellen’s question, ‘Does evil come from within us, or from beyond?’, to which Von Franz has no answer, feeds into the ambiguity around this relationship - to what extent are Ellen’s words and actions her own? And is she influencing Orlok, as well as being influenced by him?
There are also moments when Ellen speaks with a demonic voice that isn’t her own, which is full of mockery and resentment towards Thomas; yet these hostile feelings are clearly her own, though amplified by the demon’s influence. Her seizures are also highly reminiscent of Reagan’s in The Exorcist, who is surely the single most famous ‘young girl possessed by perverted demon’ in cinematic history, and certainly an inspiration.
(Another parallel to The Exorcist would be the role of Von Franz, which is nigh identical to that of Father Merrin, though Von Franz differs in that he is an occultist who invokes both angels and demons, rather than a straight-laced Catholic like Merrin10.)
Ellen’s power over Orlok, and the (sexual) assault on Thomas
There are also very definitely moments in which Ellen appears to be controlling Orlok, rather than the other way around, in particular when he attacks Thomas and drinks his blood. The attack is intercut with images of the sleepwalking Ellen, who was evidently in psychic communication with Orlok in his coffin when Thomas woke the vampire, and it seems this communication continues throughout the ensuing attack. There is even a point at which Thomas sees Ellen in Orlok’s place as the monster looms over him, and the naked vampire straddles his victim in a very suggestive (and very feminine) way as he drinks his blood. In this moment, it is implied that Orlok is the instrument of Ellen’s frustration and resentment of her husband. Orlok bites the chest, near the heart, which may symbolise Ellen attacking Thomas for his perceived lack of love for her.
This is a key point in my analysis, for the following reason: if Ellen is controlling the vampire in this moment, and if vampire predation is (as it very much appears to be) a metaphor for sex, isn’t she using Orlok11 to commit a symbolic rape of her husband? If the answer to this question is yes (and I think it is), then the film is not demonising ‘normal’12 female sexuality; it’s depicting a sexuality that has crossed a threshold and become violent and pathological. Ellen wants Thomas, but she also wants to punish him for neglecting her, and is using Orlok for both purposes.
In the film, this is framed in a conservative way, as the disordered, destructive desires of Ellen/Orlok are contrasted with the ordered, creative desires of Anna, who as a demure wife and mother embodies the Victorian feminine ideal13. This is not necessarily Eggers’ own ideology, so much as Eggers adapting the subtext of Stoker’s story faithfully14.
Nevertheless, if we take Orlok’s attack on Thomas to be Ellen acting through a proxy, we can see quite clearly that Ellen’s behaviour is not only aberrant according to Victorian mores, but also according to our own: she is committing a violent act, and the fact that it’s the repulsive (and naked) Orlok who performs the act makes the symbolic sexual threat very clear.
We are clearly supposed to attribute Ellen’s pathology to Victorian-era sexual repression of women; yet the unanswered ‘from within or from beyond?’ question suggests (or allows for the possibility) that Ellen’s dark side is at least partly her own, and not only the result of outside influences (demonic or social). In other words, she is not to be entirely excused.
So, I do not find it correct to identify Ellen solely as a victim, of the vampire or of Victorian society. She may well be those things, but she is also an abuser, who berates and belittles her husband, and even physically (/sexually) attacks him through a proxy. Is this a misogynistic characterisation? If you wish; but abusive women do exist, and trauma can be expressed in violent and disturbing ways15.
(A good analogue would be Annie from Hereditary, who was a victim of abuse from her own mother, yet abuses her son. As with Ellen, the demon’s influence only heightens the dark emotions Annie already had. Hereditary is also similar in that it uses demonic possession as an allegory for a social ill; in Hereditary parental abuse, in Nosferatu sexual repression/abuse.)
Though some viewers may feel that the director should have done more to firmly define Ellen as a victim of society, Nosferatu’s tension depends heavily on ambiguity, and the film expresses its ideas best through allegory and symbolism. Ellen is a dark yet pitiful figure16, defying easy categorisation. This adds greatly to the film’s hypnotic power, as does the fact that it lends itself to more than one interpretation.
Moreover, if we accept that Ellen committed violence against Thomas (who she does love, when she’s conscious, lucid, and free of demonic influence), then her self-sacrifice at the end of the film carries more weight, being dramatically justified as a redemptive act.
‘Fear of male sexuality’
Another aspect that we can miss if we focus too much on Ellen is the depiction of aberrant male desire, which we see in three important characters (whereas there is only one Ellen): Knock, Orlok himself, and Friedrich. All of these characters have strong animal associations, linking them to Von Franz’s ‘animal functions’ line, and thus making them susceptible to demonic influence.
Herr Knock
Knock’s animal quality is less specifically sexual, although he is shown naked in his magic circle while communing with Orlok, and also makes suspect remarks about Ellen’s beauty when meeting with Thomas. He is closely linked to Orlok’s plague rats17, and aspires to become ‘a prince among rats’ through Orlok’s power. Even Knock’s unkempt hair gives him a silhouette similar to a rat, with the tufts at the sides of his bald head resembling a rat’s ears. Knock’s strongest ‘animal function’ (and Biblical sin) is gluttony, having massacred and devoured sheep before being delivered to the asylum, where he bites the heads off of birds and savages an orderly with his teeth before running off naked again. Knock is a man whose uncontrolled animal desires have cost him his humanity, and turned him into a beast.
Count Orlok
Orlok, meanwhile, is very plainly driven by his predatory lust for Ellen throughout the film: it’s so powerful it has raised him from death. Like Knock, he also appears naked during his (suspicious) attack on Thomas, as described above. His ‘I am an appetite, nothing more’ line is worth repeating; like Knock, he is reduced to an animalistic state, having no higher impulses, ideals or motivations, beyond his all-consuming obsession with Ellen. He also has his animal associations, with his power over rats and wolves18, both traditionally voracious creatures. He also, of course, has animal-like teeth, and Ellen describes him ‘crawling like a serpent’19. His laboured breathing and noisy gulping of blood emphasise the animal mechanisms of the body, which seem to dominate his every waking moment, and even in sleep he is forever preoccupied with Ellen.
Friedrich Harding
Friedrich Harding is surely the least horrible of the three, yet ends in a particularly grotesque way, which bears examination. When he tells Thomas that Anna is pregnant again at the start of the film, Thomas jokes that Friedrich was always ‘a goat in rut,’20 which Friedrich laughingly agrees with, miming horns with his fingers. Friedrich’s pointed goat-like beard strengthens the connection. Although for much of the film there’s little indication of Friedrich as anything other than a loving husband and father who desperately wants a return to normalcy21, things get weird in the final act. After the death of his wife and daughters at Orlok’s hands, Friedrich returns to their tomb, and exhumes and kisses his wife’s corpse. Later, Thomas et al find him there dead22, half-naked and on top of Anna’s corpse, in a moment which is particularly gruesome even by Nosferatu standards. Thomas and the others hurriedly burn their friends’ bodies, to cover up Friedrich’s shame and salvage whatever dignity he had in life.
This incident suggests that the contagion spread by Orlok is not physical, but spiritual: Friedrich is corrupted by contact with Orlok, and like Knock reduced to a beast. His Victorian dignity and self-control are stripped away from him, and the throwaway ‘goat in rut’ line takes on a hideous significance. The appalling act represents the triumph of death and disorder (Orlok’s sphere) over life and order (the sphere of the uncontaminated Friedrich and Anna).
So, Nosferatu does not appeal to fear of female sexuality only, or even primarily, but of any sexuality that is uncontrolled and disordered, and this is embodied in several male characters, above all Orlok himself, who overshadows (literally) all others. In Nosferatu, all forms of desire have the potential to be destructive, and few are immune to corruption.
‘Female divinity’ and volition
One aspect of Nosferatu’s messaging which I am not so sure about is one that feels both old and yet very current, and which I don’t attribute to Stoker: the idea of ‘female divinity’ (as the excellent
put it). This is seen in the depiction of Ellen as a very special magic girl with rare psychic sensitivity, who (in Von Franz’s words) might have been ‘a Priestess of Isis’ in pagan times.I have written previously of my personal dislike of this kind of association between femaleness, sex, ‘the earth’/animals23, and magic. To me, this is basically just a primitive (as in, circa the Viking Age) variety of gender essentialism, framed to flatter women, which plays well with normie feminists24 for presumably the same reasons it played well with normie Vikings. I’m not a fan.
It also adds very little to the film, which functions exactly the same (or better) without it. Von Franz had already found the solution in a book, and could have told a non-magical Ellen all she needed to make her fateful choice. This aspect also feeds into a fatalistic interpretation of the film, in which Ellen’s death is an inevitable and destined union with her vampire lover. For me, though, it is the choice that makes Ellen’s self-sacrifice at the end meaningful, hence Orlok’s ritual requirement for her to submit to him consciously and willingly, which Ellen subverts to destroy him. The weight of this act is diminished if we view Ellen as a destined heroine, still more if we read it as her succumbing to her desire for Orlok25. Some point to Ellen’s statement that 'all I have ever done is obey my nature’ as evidence that she is altogether a victim of fate/society/nature/the vampire. I would argue that the fact that immediately after saying this, she commits to an altruistic action, by her own volition, that destroys both the vampire and herself, says otherwise.
Arguably, Ellen’s special destiny is required to explain her connection with Orlok, but a) it’s okay for some details to remain vague in a supernatural horror story, and b) if Knock can form a special connection to Orlok without being a destined prodigy, Ellen can too. As it is, Von Franz’s discovery is redundant, and he marvels that Ellen’s innate (female) intuition beats his lifetime of study. To me, this is just flattery (Ellen here being a proxy for female viewers/potential critics), and reads as if the screenwriter was overcompensating for perceived misogyny elsewhere in the script. They really needn’t have done this.
Closing thoughts
Nosferatu is a complicated beast, but not an unworthy one. Ellen is an ambiguous character, and though a victim of outside forces, is not to be read only as a victim: Orlok is to a great extent a symbolic depiction of her dark side, and her unanswered ‘from within or from beyond?’ question to Von Franz indicates that this dark side is at least partly innate, and not entirely a result of demonic/societal influence.
The scene in which a sleepwalking Ellen appears to control Orlok as he attacks Thomas is essential to understand that she is not only a victim, but also an abuser, and her sexuality is not just disordered by Victorian standards, but also by those of the 21st century. This understanding helps to contextualise her self-sacrifice as a redemptive act, as well as a necessary one.
It’s also important not to over-focus on Ellen, and to recognise the preponderance of disordered male desires in the film, in the form of Knock, Orlok, and Friedrich. All of this is linked to Von Franz’s explanation of demons as being able to influence those whose ‘animal functions’ are dominant, which is shown by the symbolic association of Knock with rats, Orlok with various animals, and Friedrich with goats, and of all three with lust and/or gluttony. Thus, Nosferatu sees destructive potential in the desires of both men and women.
The film appears to be aware of the possibility that it will be interpreted as misogynistic, and seems to over-correct by adding in the ‘female divinity’ element, which is superfluous at best. This is a minor element, however, and could be cut with virtually no change to the story or characterisation.
Further reading
I highly recommend
’s essay, Nosferatu and the Solomonic Magician. It’s a very original and big-brained take from a scholar whose PhD thesis linked to the subject. The tl;dr is that Knock, Orlok and Von Franz are a continuum of ‘Solomonic magicians’, who each attempt to control demons for their own purposes (like the Biblical king Solomon), and are successful (or unsuccessful) to various extents. It’s a cool and well-supported interpretation, and worth a look!This isn’t intended as a response to that essay specifically, because a) I didn’t read it (I hadn’t seen the film yet), and b) I can’t find it now. I hope I’m not misrepresenting the contents.
Though it combines Lucy and Mina into one character, and omits other characters such as Quincy Morris, the Tom Bombadil of Dracula adaptations. Per the 1922 film, it’s set partly in Transylvania, and partly in the fictional German city of Wisburg (which resembles Yharnam more than anything), instead of England. Eggers’ version uses many lines and details directly from Dracula, which is now public domain, and acknowledges it in the credits, whereas the 1922 film was unsurprisingly subject to legal action from Stoker’s widow.
(it could have been an email)
i.e. he was once human, and is an independent being that is not solely under the control of the demon that influences both Orlok and Ellen. Bear with; this will be important later. Also, this origin story links to Strigoi, undead witches closely connected to early vampire myths that form Nosferatu’s source material, as well as Solomonari (I think the latter term is used in the script). Dracula offered a similar origin story.
The language he speaks in the film is a reconstruction of Dacian, an extinct Indo-European language spoken in ancient Romania. So, the implication is that Orlok is thousands of years old, although has probably spent much of that time dormant in the earth, awaking only to sexually harass young women. I’ve known guys like that.
Mainly nightmare, because Christ, look at him; but tumblr has unsurprisingly been having a field day.
He appears as a shadow in the latter scene, per the Jungian imagery.
Freud had a strange relationship with this concept: on the one hand, he somewhat pushed back against it, by developing a variety of new diagnoses for patients whose suffering was previously attributed to ‘hysteria’; however, he also rejected the evidence that many of his ‘hysterical’ female patients were actually victims of sexual abuse, and developed unhelpful pseudoscientific theories such as the Oedipus complex instead of facing the reality. Still, Ellen having similar symptoms, as a symbolic/literal victim of sexual abuse, feels quite appropriate, given the Victorian setting and Freudian lineage of the film.
I am assuming that the demon Von Franz and others speak of is a third, separate entity from Orlok.
Hereditary is another possible (/probable) influence on Nosferatu: again, it features an unseen demon, which is a subtle malignant influence on the family throughout the film.
Her symbolic shadow and counterpart, lest we forget.
And I mean normal in modern terms, not in Victorian terms.
And this of course feeds into Von Franz’s framing of the conflict as taking place between life and death. Anna and Ellen are also contrasted visually, in a way that suggests a ‘light vs darkness’ conflict, with the blonde blue-eyed Anna contrasted with the brunette, dark-eyed and eternally sickly Ellen. Victorian beauty standards would favour Anna, and associate her features with angels.
There’s a fair amount of evidence that Stoker might have been gay, and that his ambivalence about this informed Dracula. He also may have contracted syphilis, after which he became increasingly conservative.
To be clear - I do think that dark/monstrous depictions of women can be misogynistic. I’ve got a new essay sitting in drafts which goes into this, in the context of my most hated video game of 2024, which has so many monstrous/stereotyped depictions of women that leftists would absolutely be condemning it if it wasn’t obsessed with pronouns. For me, the difference in Nosferatu is that it depicts one dark/disordered woman, rather than doing so systematically, and she is a) redeemed, b) is also a victim, and c) balanced out by several male characters with similar/worse characteristics.
Eggers was apparently influenced by Wuthering Heights, which checks out.
Rats, of course, are symbolically associated with greed and lust.
Bats are less present in the film, contrary to trad vampire lore; there is at least one subtle reference I remember, when Thomas steps out of Knock’s office into the rain, and the city’s people shelter under black umbrellas with distinctly batty outlines.
Serpents being associated with the devil in the Garden of Eden, and thus with both evil and female temptation.
Goats being symbolic of lust/the devil/evil in general, notably in Eggers’ previous film The Witch.
Some people think he’s the embodiment of patriarchal malice because he’s a) rich, and b) not 100% supportive of Ellen 100% of the time. But have you seen the week he’s been having?
Presumably of the plague.
A particularly troublesome association in the context of Nosferatu, in which animalism is a dangerous loss of human volition.
By which I mean House of the Dragon’s target audience (derogatory). I don’t put academic feminists in this category.
Fans of the magic girl Ellen component on reddit also tend to be haters of Thomas, because [checks notes] he put being able to afford a home ahead of Ellen’s momentary desires on a particular morning when he had a very important meeting and was running late. She’s just so special, you see, and he doesn’t deserve her. How dare he want to provide for her and not be dependent on his friend’s generosity forever. What an asshole!
Great essay, and thanks for the shout out!
While I still can't say I like the movie and how it handled its themes, I think you have made some really strong arguments regarding Ellen's character. I hadn't realized the possibility of her assaulting Thomas, which adds a lot of nuance to her character that I totally missed. The idea of her being both a victim and an aggressor is very interesting! I came out of the movie confused about what was the point of her sacrifice, and I think it would have worked better without the whole "female divinity" BS making things more confusing, but now that you have pointed out that it could be seen as a form of atonement and not just selfless sacrifice the scene feels more meaningful.