The End is the Beginning is the Beginning of The End
It is the end of February and I haven't gotten around to writing anything about a movie. Though to be fair, it has been a challenging month. For the past 3 weeks I have been having to spend every Saturday watching a movie in the Twilight franchise. Sometimes 2 movies in 1 day. IN 1 DAY. That's a lot of subpar movie watching but when in a relationship, sometimes these things are mandatory but don't forget that it is also known in the Geneva convention as; NO ESCAPE.
I saw them all but did i survive?
So as of yesterday, 2/21/26 JUDGEMENT DAY, after having survived through the last two films that make up Twilight: Breaking Dawn, I was able to regroup today on this holy Sunday and sit down to watch something worth my while. I decided on a vampire movie that would help get the bad taste of the previous 5 vampire movies out of my mouth. Something tough and mean. Something German.
Felt Pretty German to Me
Now, I had a copy of Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht for some time but never managed to find the right time to give it a watch. Halloween 2025 would have been a good time but I believe it was around that time that I had seen that recent Robert Egger's film Nosferatu.
Spoilers: Pretty Meh
Now a quick aside; Robert Egger's is a pretty talented filmmaker. His films like The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman are just great so it was a surprise to see how not good Nosferatu was.
The performances were pretty good overall but man, nothing in the rest of the film offered much to grasp onto. The gray/dead tones all throughout, the bleakness that turned more into boredom as the film goes on, and the critical point of Count Orlok not having any true terror behind any of his actions.
Sure, we see that the gray world has turn to a shittier state of gray and people going crazy but goddamn, beyond just being an exercise in style there is just isn't much there.
I was so affected by this subpar rendition that I forgot that it was Halloween and soon enough I found myself nearing the end of the year watching the Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate. Now, after going through the entire Twilight Saga and critically verifying my hill to die on as being on Team Jacob; I went about in watching Werner Herzog's adaptation of Dracula.
The Film
The story follows just about the same rhythms of the novel Dracula except with a good chunk of characters and relationship being nixed to shift the focus of the hour and forty something minutes to just the major love triangle of Jonathan Harker, Count Dracula, and Lucy.
Jonathan and Lucy are happily married but Lucy is having some crazy dreams. Jonathan gets an opportunity to make a real estate deal with Count Dracula in Translyvania from his boss Renfield. He goes out to Translyvania where he meets the albino man to make a deal but it might be one with too high of a price.
What separates this from say the other Dracula adaptations from the 1931 Tod Browning film to the fairly modern Francis Ford Coppola adaptation and ending with the Robert Egger's dull gray version is that there is a real sense of grounded reality in this one. I will get more into that later on but what is also drastically different here is with the material having possibly the least amount of time of interaction with Lucy and Dracula. There is not a hint of suave to Klaus Kinski's Count Dracula. He looks like a guy that has been living underground for centuries and shows it by having a single awkward conversation with Lucy and then the movie shifts to her having to sacrifice herself for the greater good.
Another change was the character of Dr. Van Helsing becoming far more disinterested and above all useless to the story. Portrayed far more as a man of science that denies any belief of superstitions or folklore dealing with anything that can't be proven with SCIENCE!
The whole town goes to shit when the Count arrives to town with some rats who have the plague. Which happens to be right around when Jonathan comes back. He having lost his mind completely as he is unable to recognize any of his friends let alone his wife Lucy.
Lucy faints in distress but hunts down an answer and comes across a book that Jonathan received which delves into occult myths and understands immediately that she was dealing with a blood sucker.
I don't think there was a mention of the word 'Vampire' in the film. The laws of bloodsuckers stating that its up to a woman with a pure heart to keep the bloodsucker locked down until dawn comes around.
Lucy offers herself and the Count takes the bait. Dying as the dawn breaks but what is interesting is that he dies as though it is a heart attack. His body still on the ground in physical form as Van Helsing finds Lucy dead. He shows up and his survival instincts kick in and he goes straight for the hammer and stake to get the job done.
The twist here is that Jonathan has now taken the role of the villainous vampire. Having whats left as an authority to arrest Van Helsing for killing the Count. With his vampire buck teeth and pale as the moon skin, he rides off into the desert and the most likely destination being that he is heading back to Transylvania to live out his life. Maybe to finish that real estate deal.
What I Got
With the various differences, it feels more like a straight forward take on the material and leaves you feeling fulfilled when its all said and done. I'm sure its a possible reflection of the original 1922 Nosferatu film but I haven't had a chance to give it a watch so I cannot say yay or nay towards this observation. Regardless, the more streamlined the material gives the story to feel more grounded.
Now, when I say more grounded I mean that it feels more a part of our world than another world. As we watch Jonathan Harker travel to Transylvania, we find ourselves watching him travel across actually vast landscapes. Real wide plains. Real tall mountains. A real sense of scale that the world Harker lives in to give a far more credible feeling of being real. There are no sets depicting cinematic space distorted landscapes in order to create scale. There is only the real world that these characters live in.
Also, I want to give a special shout out to that intro credit sequence. I don't know where it was shot but the fact that mummified remains, or at least nearing the end phase of decomposition, are screaming in a silent face of pain is a terrifically horrifying way to not only start the film but also set a tone. Where this tomb was located I can only assume in Count Dracula's massive castle but no answers are given and we are left wondering.
What also helps ground the film is the amount of time spent showcasing scenes with actual physical props. A piece of the story deals with the Count arriving to the city while bringing the plague. Now, in the other films this is shown as best as could be with a few amount of rats running around. Maybe even CGI rats with the more recent films. Herzog shows an insane amount of rats running around. Even on a minuscule budget, there is great effort showcasing that the city and citizens are losing a sense of stability and civility as the film goes on with images such as more and more coffins being taken to the cemetery. Reaching a point where coffins are now out in the street with no one around to carry them. We see a family that has the plague sitting down to eat their final meal with the rats. This truly feels like a once prospering society losing it. Also, the way the film was staged and photographed was also visually striking when comparing it to Werner Herzog's other films. Far more stylized than his other work in terms of mood lighting and creating interesting framing for the characters to maneuver and none of it feels awkward or out of place.
The performances are great but i suppose having to work against Klaus Kinski bringing the heat would require one to step it up. Though Isabelle Adjani is something great. She is able to play like a woman that is both feminine and strong but in a soft way. She isn't running around punching people out or shit. Instead, she is far more proactive in the role of Lucy more so than the other portrayals of the character. She just doesn't become a victim but more so comes to realize that as the world is burning around here and people of authority do not care to listen and so she must do what she has to do to get the job done.
Lastly, the music is pretty good. Especially that one Wagner piece that plays here and there.
The Beginning is The End is the The End of The Beginning
I cannot say that I am surprised that the film was good. Werner Herzog makes good movies. I will say that Kinski surprised me since a majority of Herzog's films has him playing characters that are too tough to love but the amount of sympathy I had for this Count Dracula, who didn't say or do much, in that last scene especially was a strange feeling that caught me off guard. Seeing him totally white in the eyes and yet the facial expressions saying so much, goddamn did that crazy sack of shit just know how to act. Though I can't say the film is anywhere near being romantic in the slightest so it cannot reach GREAT status, as a stripped down take on the Dracula story though its pretty solid.