I was already a mᴀssive fan of Robert Eggers’ chilling Nosferatu remake, but I love it even more after hearing the director explain what the ending means to him. Just like Eggers’ previous horror movies, Nosferatu is deeply disturbing, visually stunning, and thematically rich. Eggers uses this tale of a vampire’s relentless pursuit of his real estate agent’s wife to explore the power of desire. Desire can be one’s greatest strength, as it motivates them to pull off impressive feats like mᴀssacring a ship’s entire crew, but it can also be one’s greatest weakness.
At the end of Nosferatu, the object of Count Orlok’s desire, Ellen Hutter, uses that desire against him. When he starts sucking her blood, she encourages him to stay on top of her and continue draining her lifeforce until the sunrise comes along to destroy him. Initially, I thought this ending was just telling us that our innermost desires can be used to exploit us into making fatal mistakes. And that alone would make it an interesting note to end the film on. But according to Eggers’ own explanation, it goes even deeper than that.
Robert Eggers’ Explanation Completely Changes Nosferatu’s Ending
Count Orlok Was Killed By The “Purity Of Dawn”
Per classical vampiric lore, vampires are vulnerable to sunlight. It’s a vampire trope as old as the genre itself. Vampires are immortal, they have superhuman strength, and they can turn into a bat to disappear into the night, but they have some pretty glaring weaknesses, too. Garlic, crucifixes, wooden stakes, and even just natural light can be used to kill a vampire. At the end of Nosferatu, Ellen seemingly uses sunlight to kill Count Orlok. But according to Eggers, it’s technically not the sunlight itself that kills the vampire at the end of his movie.
The rule is that vampires have to be back in their graves “by the first cockcrow.” So, it’s not the light itself that kills them; it’s the break of dawn.
Eggers clarified that the original vampiric folklore doesn’t confirm that sunlight kills vampires. The rule is that vampires have to be back in their graves “by the first cockcrow.” So, it’s not the light itself that kills them; it’s the break of dawn. Eggers said that Orlok is killed by the “purity of dawn,” not the actual sunlight. Orlok represents everything horrible about the world, which is why he can only come out at night and has to hide himself away throughout the day. The daybreak represents all the good in the world coming back in to extinguish the evil.
Nosferatu’s Ending Is Even Better With Robert Eggers’ Explanation In Mind
It’s A Metaphor For Hope Extinguishing Evil
Keeping Eggers’ explanation in mind makes Nosferatu’s ending even better, because it gives it a more poignant symbolism. It’s not just about vampire movie tropes doing their thing; it’s about hope and innocence coming in to wipe the monster off the earth. Nosferatu subverts the usual tropes by going back to the original folklore that all these stories are built on. Focusing more on the crack of dawn than the actual light emanating from it makes Nosferatu’s ending so much stronger.
For the most part, Nosferatu is a dreary horror movie that wallows in the misery of grief, disease, madness, and pure, unbridled evil. But with Eggers’ explanation of the ending in mind, it closes out its story on a surprisingly optimistic note. No matter how much evil there is in the world, it’ll always be outweighed by the good. And no matter how powerful the monster coming after you may be, whether that monster is loss or illness or violence or despair, hope will always be more powerful.
Robert Eggers Manages To Make Count Orlok’s Death Feel Fresh In Nosferatu
This Detail Brings A Whole New Angle To The Familiar Ending
One of the main reasons why horror remakes rarely work out is that a scare is never as effective the second time around. The sH๏τ-for-sH๏τ remake of Psycho doesn’t work, because the surprise factor of Marion Crane’s murder is gone. But by adding this new detail to Orlok’s death, Eggers managed to make his version of Nosferatu feel fresh. At the end of F.W. Murnau’s classic original Nosferatu, just like in Eggers’ version, Ellen invites Orlok into her bed chamber so he can drink her blood, and when the sun rises, the vampire bursts into a plume of smoke.
Nosferatu is Eggers’ highest-grossing film, having grossed $180.2 million worldwide against a $50 million budget.
Eggers’ Nosferatu ends the same way, but the key difference is that it’s not the light that kills Orlok; it’s the innocent, untouched beauty of the morning sun. Audiences who were familiar with the 1922 original might have known where Eggers’ reimagining was going, but they were still surprised by the ending. By reworking the lore and giving Orlok a much more brutal, horrifying, and drawn-out death, Eggers managed to completely reinvent Nosferatu.
