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After spending years waiting for Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, I finally got a chance to watch the director’s long-awaited remake of one of the best horror movies of all time. To say the vampire film lived up to my expectations would be an understatement, as Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok (and the rest of the major characters) were to die for, and the tone and visual aesthetic of the movie blew me away. But there was one scene in the movie that freaked me out the most… and it didn’t involve the film’s villain. Well, at least not directly…
Come with me as I break down one of the most unsettling scenes from the 2024 movie schedule and go over why I felt it was more terrifying than anything involving Skarsgård’s half-decayed, unrelenting, and omnipresent force of pure evil…
Thomas Hutter’s Arrival In Transylvania Made Me Feel So Uneasy
Much like in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, Robert Eggers’ remake spends a chunk of its runtime following Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) as he travels to Transylvania to meet Count Orlok and have him sign the deed to his new castle in Germany. But before getting there in this new version, Hutter stops at an inn near Orlok’s home, which sets the tone for the rest of the film.
It’s not like everything that happened before this point in the movie was cheery or pleasant, but the shift that takes place upon Thomas’ arrival in the small village takes things to the next level and adds even more uneasiness and dread to the movie. The strange and foreign customs, the dark and foggy environment, and the coldness of it all really stuck with me.
The Way The Local Peasants Reacted When Thomas Talked About Count Orlok Was So Unsettling
But it isn’t just the strange environment that made me so uneasy, as the locals are so unsettling with how they act towards Thomas Hutter. Showing off with extravagant dance moves, shouts, chants, and so many looks they cut through him, the peasants lack pleasantries and instead have a general coldness about them. Then, when they find out why he’s come all this way, things take a turn.
The ice-cold treatment Hutter receives upon mentioning the grotesque Count Orlok adds even more tension, fear, and dread to the scene (and the movie in general). As Thomas walks through the inn looking for a room for the night, it’s the silent treatment from all but a few of the locals, and even they aren’t warm to his arrival. Add in the intense and frightening scene where they impale a vampire’s corpse in the unbelievable moonlight that may or may not have been a nightmare, and you have yourself pure horror.
The Whole Scene Felt Like The Beginning Of The Resident Evil 4 Video Game, As Strange As That Sounds
Resident Evil 4 is one of my favorite video games of all time, and it’s mostly due to the game’s look and tone. No longer set in Raccoon City and absent of zombies, the iconic survival horror game dropped the player in the middle of a small European village infected by a parasite. I was taken back to the beginning of the game as soon as Thomas Hutter walked his horse into the small village in Nosferatu.
Though the game and movie have little in common outside of that, Nosferatu left me feeling things I haven’t felt since first playing Resident Evil 4 back in 2005. Like Hutter in the movie, Leon Kennedy in the game is thrust into the middle of a strange and unfamiliar world he knows nothing about, one where he doesn’t know who or what to trust. And both stories just get crazier from there.
Nosferatu, which received heaps of praise from critics, is still playing in theaters and is a theatrical experience that needs to be seen. But if you want to check out other versions of the classic story while you wait for more upcoming horror movies on the 2025 movie schedule, there’s plenty to hold you over.