Nosferatu, by Robert Eggers

“The vampire lives on, and cannot die by mere passing of time… he flourishes when he can fatten on the blood of the living.” Bram Stoker, Dracula.

The vampire, with its alabaster skin, sharpened fangs, and blood-slicked mouth, remains a hauntingly persistent figure in popular culture, a charmed and beloved relic that seems, characteristically, to supersede the bounds of time. Heinrich August Ossenfelder’s poemDer Vampir (1748) was one of the earliest attempts to capture the vampire in verse: “Thy life’s blood drains away./ And so shalt thou be trembling/ For thus shall I be kissing/ And death’s threshold thou’ it be crossing / With fear, in my cold arms.” While Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) introduced themes of forbidden love and female intimacy veiled in supernatural horror, solidifying the vampire as a lasting cultural archetype. From Twilight mania and the late-2000s surge in vampire media (Let the Right One In, Thirst, The Vampire Diaries) to recent films like Renfield (2023) and Abigail (2024), the vampire endures as both a relic of its Gothic origins and a reinvention for modern audiences.

The vampire’s allure, deeply rooted in its erotic and curious pull, is inextricably tied to our self-destructive impulses. This duality – the vampire as a figure of both eros and abjection – is no doubt central to its enduring fascination. Unlike the techno-paranoia of science-fiction, which often externalises anxiety in the form of machines or alien others, horror operates within the realm of loss: the dissolution of identity, the transgression of boundaries, and the obliteration of the self. The vampire, more than any other horror archetype, encapsulates this dissolution: Its bite alone – a consummation as much as a violation – renders it a potent metaphor for the ways in which desire and annihilation are intrinsically bound. 

In Eggers’ Nosferatu, Count Orlok is portrayed not merely as a malevolent figure but as a force of existential dread. Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), the film’s tragic protagonist, is irresistibly drawn to him — not out of fear, but a compulsion toward the forbidden. Eggers explores a psychological terrain where attraction and revulsion coexist, threatening the boundaries of the self. 

While Stoker’s Dracula often portrays the vampire as a symbol of seduction and aristocratic menace, Eggers returns to the grotesque roots of the creature. He notes, “The vampire of folklore is not a nobleman. The vampire of folklore is a corpse. An undead corpse.” This unromantic depiction aligns more closely with Murnau’s Nosferatu. In its eternal hunger and spectral persistence, the vampire becomes a haunting mirror of our desire for things that outlive their purpose, that transcend mortality yet offer no solace, only endless craving. It seduces precisely because it represents the allure of annihilation.

Functioning as a spectral revenant, the vampire defies death’s finality and embodies humanity’s cyclical and destructive drives. Refusing to remain buried, the vampire mirrors our own compulsion for the forbidden. In this sense, the vampire is not merely a figure of horror but a symbol of our unresolved fascination with the inexhaustible. Eggers elaborates on the folkloric vampire’s brutal symbolism, through which he believes “the vampire embodies disease, death, and sex in a base, brutal, and unforgiving way.” 

To be drawn to the vampire is to be drawn to the abject, that which is tabooed and deemed as shameful. As Lily-Rose Depp observes, “Shame was a feeling women were made to feel a lot. Women in that time period were only set on a path to become one thing. If you strayed you would be looked down upon.” It appears shame, perversion and self-destruction are all deeply enmeshed: we do things to perverse things wound ourselves because we are ashamed, leading us to become further ashamed of our own perversions. 

Notably, few characters in the film hold Ellen accountable for her desires. Thomas (Ellen’s husband, played by Nicholas Holt), Anna (Ellen’s friend, played by Emma Corrin), and Professor Von Franz (an occult doctor, played by William Dafoe) approach Ellen with empathy rather than blame. For Ellen, her torment stems largely from within – a profound internalised guilt that convinces her she is the source of impending ruin for herself and those around her – no doubt a self-flagellating sentiment most women share. This dynamic underscores the deeply existential nature of horror, where the true terror is not the external monster but one's own desires.

This existential framing of the grotesque extends beyond Ellen’s individual psyche to a universal human condition. It forces us to reckon with the nature of shame, transgression, and self-destruction in our own lives. Why do we pursue the very things that harm us? Why do we wound ourselves in the act of trying to escape shame?

Ellen’s attraction to the vampire is not simply revulsion — it is a draw towards what is forbidden, an eros entwined with abjection. Her internal conflict with her own desires finds poignant expression in her husband’s offering of lilacs, flowers that are traditionally associated with innocence, the promise of renewal, and funerary rites, often laid for those who die young. For Thomas, the lilacs seem to represent his vision of Ellen — beauty and youth, while Ellen’s rejection of the flowers reveal her growing disconnection from this idealised image. To her, the lilacs are a futile gesture destined to wilt and die, much like the innocence and hope they symbolise.

Her internal torment erupts in a pivotal moment when she confesses her history with Count Orlok to Thomas, culminating in a seizure during which she violently tears her dress apart. This visceral act functions as a symbolic surrender to the darker impulses she cannot escape. Together, the rejection of the lilacs and her breakdown before Thomas illustrate the film’s central theme: Ellen’s struggle to reconcile the expectations placed upon her with the desire that consumes her. 

Ellen’s magnetism toward Orlok mirrors a broader fascination with annihilation — what Freud might term the death drive. The vampire becomes not merely a character but an emblem forbidden that lures and the thresholds of mortality. It is a figure through which we enact fantasies of surrender and abjection, confronting the porous boundaries of desire and decay. Eggers’ Nosferatu solidifies the vampire’s position as a perennial archetype, haunting not only the screens and pages it inhabits but the very corridors of our cultural unconscious. In the vampire, we find an unrelenting mirror to our own vulnerabilities and compulsions — a mythic figure that, like its undying subject, continues to thrive on the lifeblood of our fears and yearnings.

The vampire’s refusal to remain buried, its spectral persistence across time and culture, underscores its role as a haunting metaphor for our unresolved longings, remaining one of our most enduring cultural symbols, offering not just a site of fear, but of existential fascination. It thrives on our collective psyche, much like Stoker’s immortal observation: “The vampire lives on, and cannot die by mere passing of time… he flourishes when he can fatten on the blood of the living.”

In the final scene, Ellen gives herself up to the vampire, her sacrificial death bringing about his demise. Her lifeless body, intermingled with the vampiric corpse, is surrounded by lilacs lit in the dense warm glow of the rising sun — the former symbols of youth and impermanence now serve as a poignant tableau for Ellen’s fate, fulfilling her earlier prophecy. Not merely a martyred wife dying to protect her husband; Ellen instead becomes a necromancer of desire, returning to her site of wounding and twisted compulsion, confronting her past shame and resurrecting it into a source of power. In this sense, Ellen is a practitioner of her own closure, rather than a heralded village heroine. By facing the dark remnants of her relationship with Orlok, her sacrifice becomes an assertion of selfhood rather than an act of submission — a deliberate choice to confront the forces that have haunted her, both external and internal.

Alongside the tale of desire and revulsion in Nosferatu, the vampire endures in its ability to transcend its gothic origins to become a cultural metaphor: a symbol of our attraction to what terrifies, wounds, and consumes. How might we become necromancers of our desire? Returning to what is wounded, twisted, and compulsive?  As long as we are captivated by the questions of what lies beyond the limits of desire and revulsion, the vampire will continue to rise from its grave, stalking the shadowy corridors of our cultural imagination — an undying reflection of our most terrifying impulses.