Nosferatu Re-Animated – review

Director: Fran Blackwood

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

Another day, another Nosferatu variant. This time an animated version. The animation was done off the original film and is digital in nature and that leaves the art detail for the characters quite basic but it worked in its own way.

Following the film (or at least a cut thereof as this is shorter than the kino restoration) one expected it to be much the same and, in broad strokes, it is. Eschewing intertitles for subtitles, however, the story does change within the dialogue and the film does use a mix and match of names from the German release and names from Stoker.

say it with (dead) flowers

To understand how things have changed we should look at Jonathan Harker (Hutter) and the interaction with Nina (Ellen) at the head of the film. Whilst the animation follows the film (that it has essentially traced from) Nina shows no horror that the flowers Harker gives her have been killed. Then, when Knock sends him to Transylvania he talks about being rich to Nina – now in the original Knock mentions making money, but that being a driving motivation for Harker isn’t communicated. This Harker is not as greedy as in the Fisher remake and it does make me wonder if the film seen through the lens of American culture is the thing that makes that a communicated want from the character in both films?

meeting Orlock

However, in the main things remain pretty true to the original. There are some odd moments – Harker picks a book up at home before travelling and packs it, suggesting it is Van Helsing’s book… but the Book of Vampyres is the book found at the inn and the mention of the book, which is not credited to an author in the original, at the head of the film is a little confusing though I can see where those ideas stem from. The hyena (or werewolf) looks more like a fox with the digital art rendering. The music, it has to be said, is fab with a classical score matched against metal based guitar scores at other points. The art is not, for me, the greatest style but I understand how it was done and it does work for the film (as mentioned). However I was left wondering what the point was (bar the re-scoring) when an animation such as NYsferatu adds layers that this did not. Rather than this I would just put the Murnau on, 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK