A Tale of Two Movies

It would be hard to find two recently released horror films as different from each other as Nosferatu and Presence. Nosferatu is a large-scale production reboot of director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent German Expressionist classic. It boasts arty cinematography, opulent art direction, lavish costume design, and elaborate makeup and hair styling. Those sumptuous creative constructions have been acknowledged by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences via four Oscar nominations in the respective categories. Presence, on the other hand, is spare in scope. Shot entirely in one location, the intimate narrative unspools from an unusual point of view: the resident ghost’s. The camera observes what the ghost sees, and we, the audience, are complicit voyeurs who interpret what unfolds in front of us. At this point it is only fair that I provide a personal spoiler alert. Subtlety in horror impresses me more than the bombastic variety. This places Nosferatu at an evaluation disadvantage from the outset. However, my overall criticisms of that movie go beyond an inherent stylistic preference.

The film’s director Robert Eggers has built a following as a “historical horror” filmmaker for setting his movies in centuries long past. His debut in the subgenre was The Witch (2015), a nicely spooky movie that delved into female empowerment. His follow-up was the less satisfying The Lighthouse (2019) which milked the claustrophobic environs and toyed with homoeroticism; two men sequestered in a phallic building, there are expectations. With Nosferatu, Eggers had a larger budget and playground. And far too often, success breeds excess. The scenes in Transylvania, where German lawyer Thomas Hutter (played by Nicholas Hoult) goes to meet the eccentric Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) are labored. Subtitles for the locals’ Transylvanian dialogue seem a trifle absurd. The bulk of the narrative takes place in Germany but is logically in English for its viewers. One could conjecture that the specific employment of subtitles was to illustrate how alien Count Orlok’s native land is. It could also be construed as a means to make the movie seem more like an arthouse film. In the Transylvanian setting during a ritual village vampire staking, it is jarring to view a naked bodacious babe riding a horse to the ceremony. Described in the credits as “Virgin on Horseback,” her appearance struck me as gratuitous. There is equal opportunity male nudity in the film with the full-frontal Count Orlok, and the genitalia-covered Solicitor Knock (Simon McBurney.) But it is fair to point out that neither of those character’s naked physiques are meant to be even remotely titillating. Which is a good segue to discuss the sexual components of the film.

Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) is Thomas Hutter’s bride. The proprietary constraints of the 19th century dictate how she must behave, but she has atavistic hungers that have afflicted her since girlhood. Her lengthy psychic relationship with Count Orlok feeds the impulses. She is deemed unstable and placed in physical restraints more confining than what her culture already demands. Now, all this repressed sexuality and seduction to the dark side has the potential to build to a shuddery crescendo. Instead, the embracing of abandon is conveyed through a series of scenes that are reminiscent of possession sequences in The Exorcist. When the sex scenes do come, they are not erotic. Ellen taunts her husband into an act of rape and the acquiescence to the embrace of Orlok is unappetizingly graphic rather than sensually rhapsodic. Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, a disgraced academic and occult savant (Willem Dafoe) pronounces that Ellen sacrificed herself to save the town from the plague that Orlok brought upon it. That is an accurate appraisal of Ellen in Murnau’s silent film; a virtuous woman is salvation. Robert Eggers’s take on Ellen’s relationship with the count leans toward a culmination of mutual hunger. Orlok sums it up: “I am an appetite, nothing more.”

The performances run the gamut of interesting to ludicrous. Playing von Franz, an incarnation of Dracula’s Dr. Van Helsing, is an invitation for any performer to overact. It is hard to forget Anthony Hopkins going overboard as Van Helsing in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Still, Dafoe’s gonzo take on the character is beyond flamboyant, particularly when taken in tandem with dialogue like “I have seen things in this world that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb! We are not so enlightened as we are blinded by the gaseous light of science.”  In contrast, there are actors who portray peripheral characters who sleepwalk through the delivery of their stilted lines. No in-depth investment is required by the performers. Parenthetically, animals in movies rely on trainers rather than interacting with directors, and it is noteworthy that director/writer Eggers has an affinity for placing animals in his films. The Witch, for example, features a malevolent goat and a memorable raven. The Lighthouse makes seagulls menacing, and Nosferatu has the legion of plague-carrying rats. The cats featured in Nosferatu are more benign, populating von Franz’s bizarre abode, and Ellen’s feline provides a modicum of comfort to her. In a nicely ironic scene, Ellen transports her kitty in a carrier through streets infested by the rats.

Possessing images that are visually stunning, Robert Eggers latest entry into historical horror does not infuse vampire cinema lore with anything revelatory. It is strangely unscary and the attempts to shock rely on repulsion. I left the theater feeling neither shaken nor stirred.

Presence, with a running time of one hour and twenty-four minutes, is approximately fifty minutes shorter than Nosferatu. The economy of the story is one of its strengths. It zeroes in on a family of four who move into a suburban home with a zip code that will enhance the college opportunities of the son (played by Eddy Maday.) His extremely motivated and doting mother (Lucy Liu) has a penchant for seeking advantages. While mom lavishes her attention on the male child, daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) is the focus of the father (Chris Sullivan.) Chloe is mourning the sudden death of her best friend, a high school aged girl who stopped breathing. Another young woman in the vicinity recently died the same way. Attuned, Chloe senses nuances in the house that lead her to believe her deceased friend might be haunting her. It is an awareness that something is watching her, a presence that often keeps a lookout from the outpost of Chloe’s closet. When Chloe is about to have sex with her brother’s school friend (West Mulholland) a shelf in that closet abruptly collapses.

The brother’s comrade behaves like an enlightened male; he does not want to pressure Chloe into physical intimacy. When they talk about their emotional issues, he weeps as he confides in her. Conversely, this communicative exchange seems the opposite of the chilly dynamic between Chloe and her brother, who resents her for having so much mental baggage and raining on his parade. The brother comes across as the stereotypical narcissistic high school athlete. He boasts about a cruel joke he instigated against a female student, causing his mom to mildly reprimand him. Chloe and the father are appalled and, soon after, there are crashing sounds as the brother’s room is trashed by an unseen force.

So far, so good, indeed. Director Steven Soderbergh creates an atmosphere of unease that is palpable. Under the pseudonym of “Peter Andrews” he also did the crafty cinematography.  In addition, using the faux moniker of “Mary Ann Bernard,” he served as the film’s editor. My quibbles with the movie have nothing to do with Soderbergh’s amazing multi-tasking. The minor grumbles relate to the plot. Screenwriter David Koepp is responsible for a 1999 horror film of which I am fond, Stir of Echoes. Koepp directed and adapted the movie from the 1958 novel A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson. There are thematic echoes of Stir of Echoes in Presence that might be an attribution homage. In addition, Stir of Echoes features a scene in which a character faces the camera and speaks to something nebulous, breaking the fourth wall. This is akin to the cinematography device of the camera illustrating the ghost’s point of view in Presence. Without seeing the script, however, it is hard to know if Koepp had written the point of view aspect as part of the screenplay or whether the camera as ghost inspiration came from Soderbergh. But those comments do not pertain to my quibbles. The criticism of the plot concerns falling back on such well-worn trappings as bringing in a psychic based on a flimsy recommendation. Clunky misdirection in the latter part of the storyline also detracts. Presence is not a perfect horror film, but with its fine acting ensemble and in the creation of tangible unease and splendid supernatural ambience, it is highly worthwhile.

It was a fascinating experience to have attended both Presence and Nosferatu within days of one another. Although polar opposites in terms of style and substance, it was fun to see them share a theater marquee.