‘Nosferatu’s outdated take on female sexuality is frustrating

Robert Eggers’ new take on Nosferatu is, quite on its face, a film about sexuality—and female sexuality in particular. It expands on the original 1922 Nosferatu by adding an explicitly sexual relationship history between Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) and Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp).

Spoilers ahead for Nosferatu.

The film badly wants you to believe its discussion of female sexuality is brave and bold. It wants you to walk away thinking that Ellen is emboldened and empowered in this version of the film. The outcome of the film—and the context given to Ellen in the meantime—says otherwise. Instead of critiquing historical attitudes towards female sexuality, Nosferatu ends up punishing it all the same.

Content warning: this article contains mentions of sexual assault and rape

What Nosferatu is trying to say about female sexuality

The discussion of female sexuality coincides with the very beginning of the film. We learn the full context of this scene later: the teenage Ellen was so lonely, so horny, she “called” out to Count Orlok, awakening him and summoning him to her. The ensuing sex begins with Ellen seemingly on board but quickly turns into rape.

Ellen is deeply traumatized by the experience. As is typical of so many encounters with rape, she is not believed and is even blamed for “her condition.” That being said, her sexual drive is fully intact—strong, even, especially considering the image of women in 1838.

Women’s sexuality was indeed deeply societally repressed in Christian / European societies in the nineteenth century. The presence of a strong sexual drive in a woman was even dismissed as a disease, such as “nymphomaniac hysteria” or “uterine fury.” According to Psychology Today‘s Melissa Rampelli, succumbing to this “disease” was seen as a sign of weak will, and the “disease” could ravage both the mind and the body. The cure was, naturally, marriage.

Nosferatu nods to all of this. Once Count Orlok is pulled back to Ellen, she begins having the symptoms of “nymphomaniac hysteria.” Handled better, Nosferatu could have held a potent message about the harms of conservative Christian society’s ways of repressing sexuality. But simply acknowledging historical context is not the same as condemning or undermining it. Having a character say “yes” to an interaction does not always mean they’re empowered.

What Nosferatu actually says about female sexuality

Ellen refers to her initial teenage sexual interaction with Count Orlok as her “shame.” Nosferatu offers her a release from that shame: to have sex with Orlok once again, keeping him in her bed until morning and sacrificing herself in the process.

Willem Dafoe’s Professor entreats her to make this sacrifice, claiming that only Ellen is capable of destroying this murderous force that has been unleashed upon the Earth. Ellen is responsible for that unleashing, after all. The Professor refers to Ellen’s carnal desire as her “evil.”

That was when it hit me: the idea that Ellen alone was horny enough as a teenage girl to summon a monster is downright laughable. Yes, there’s something to be said about how the repression of sexuality makes each woman feel like an island. If you live in that kind of isolation and think you’re the only person having those thoughts, you do feel like a monster—or like you’re grappling with one. Nosferatu acknowledges that idea to an extent and yet punishes Ellen anyway.

As The New Yorker’s Richard Brody quite bluntly puts it, Ellen is forced to “refuck her rapist” to save the town. The film treats this like it’s some kind of apotheosis; like Ellen has attained sexual autonomy. Conflating a forced confrontation suggested by a man who calls her sexual impulses “evil” with the attainment of sexual autonomy feels like a grave misunderstanding. “[Eggers’] foregrounding of the movie’s prime female character may resemble a form of progress, but it’s a vampiric victory,” Brody writes.

Furthermore, the film fundamentally misunderstands what victory looks like. Ellen is forced not only to “refuck her rapist,” but to sacrifice herself in doing so. Aside from the precedent of the character’s death in the 1922 Nosferatu, there’s no reason Ellen needs to die because she has had a second sexual encounter with Orlok. She is fatally punished for having sexual curiosity as a teenager and having the audacity to continue having a sexual drive as an adult.

As the lights went up in my theater, I felt empty. Nosferatu looks haunting and has some gorgeous shots, but it feels hollow beneath the visual sheen. Attempting to dig deeper into the film’s themes only accentuates that hollowness. Nosferatu misunderstands its own takes. It tries to build up its heroine, and in doing so, only makes its ultimate punishment of her feel more cruel.