Robert Eggers' long-awaited take on "Nosferatu" proves to be a stunning visual achievement that ultimately gets tangled in its own ambitions. The film starts as a mesmerising gothic fever dream, with Eggers doing what he does best - creating an immersive historical world where every frame could be a classical painting. The opening act, following Thomas Hutter's (Nicholas Hoult) journey into Transylvania, is genuinely enchanting. The cinematography, with use of rich blacks, feels like a perfect homage to Murnau's 1922 original while establishing its own haunting identity.

Lily-Rose Depp brings a compelling presence to Ellen Hutter, while Bill Skarsgård's as Count gives a performance more likely to divide opinion. The supporting cast, including Willem Dafoe as an eccentric occult expert and the Hardings (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin), all deliver solid performances without particularly elavating the film.

Where the film stumbles is in its latter half, when Eggers' obsession with detail and explanation begins to work against the story's mythic qualities. Unlike Herzog's 1979 version, which explored moral complexity, or Coppola's gothic romanticism in "Dracula," this adaptation seems caught up in demystifying its own mythology. The second half gets bogged down in excessive exposition, with dialogue that feels more like a historical treatise than the poetic horror of the first act.

The attention to period accuracy and logical consistency, becomes almost suffocating here. Every supernatural element needs an explanation, every curse requires a footnote, and the final act particularly suffers from this compulsive need to tie everything up nicely. It's as if the film doesn't trust its audience enough to let the mystery breathe.

There's still plenty to admire here with individual sequences showcasing Eggers' masterful command of atmosphere. But like many horror films, the reveal and aftermath can't quite live up to the setup. What starts as a hypnotic journey into darkness ends up feeling more like a detailed historical recreation with vampire elements.

The film is undeniably gorgeous and crafted with clear passion, but it ultimately falls victim to its own meticulousness. Sometimes, as Murnau knew a century ago, the unexplained is more terrifying than the carefully catalogued.

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