NOSFERATU

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens with a young woman, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), calling out and asking for companionship. She is answered by a low, inhuman voice saying that she has awoken him from an eternal slumber. The voice comes from an unseen entity, viewed only through the silhouette in Ellen’s drapes blowing by the window. The entity asks if Ellen pledges herself to him, to which she agrees. Ellen starts to seize up.

Germany, 1838 – Years later, Ellen has married real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and is living in the town of Wisborg. The two are deeply in love, and Thomas begins a new job working for Herr Knock (Simon McBurney). He tasks Thomas with selling off an old castle belonging to the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard). When Thomas tells Ellen of his impending trip to sell the castle, she becomes upset. She tells him of a dream that she had on their wedding night, where all the guests had died and she was met by Death as her groom, but Ellen claims that she had never felt so happy.

Thomas leaves Ellen in the care of their friends, Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin). The couple have two daughters, Clara and Louise (Adela Hesova and Milena Konstantinova), and Anna is pregnant with a third child.

Thomas takes his leave and travels to a small village in Bohemia for the night. The locals try to shun him when they learn he has business involving the Count, but they let him stay when he pays double. At night, Thomas watches the villagers walking into the woods with a nude woman and coming to a sarcophagus containing a creature, whom they impale with a stake. Thomas later continues his journey and walks alone into the woods, where a carriage pulls up for him and escorts him to the castle in the mountains.

Thomas meets Count Orlok, who mostly moves in darkness. He tells Thomas to address him as “my lord” and goes over the paperwork to sell the castle. Thomas cuts his thumb, which Orlok senses and feeds off the blood. Orlok sees Thomas’s locket that contains a picture of Ellen, whom he recognizes as the woman who pledged loyalty to him years ago. Orlok doesn’t let Thomas leave due to his weakened state. Orlok feeds off Thomas’s chest while he is unconscious. Later, Thomas finds Orlok resting in his sarcophagus, confirming to him that he is a vampire. Thomas tries to kill him with a pickaxe, but Orlok awakens and pursues Thomas along with his hounds. Thomas climbs out of a window onto a ledge and jumps into the river to escape.

While out with Friedrich and Anna, Ellen begins to experiences seizures once again. She becomes distressed from Thomas’s absence and is bedridden. Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson) is brought in to treat Ellen with modern medicine, believing she is suffering from an excess of blood. Meanwhile, Thomas is recovered and taken to a nearby church for his injuries, but he rushes back home, knowing that Orlok has his sights set on Ellen.

Sievers goes to his mentor, Dr. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), an expert in the occult. They visit Herr Knock, who is institutionalized due to his madness. He has several headless pigeons near him before he takes a bite out of another, saying that his master (Orlok) is coming. Von Franz determines that Ellen is being controlled by Orlok, who is also known as “Nosferatu”, though Friedrich is skeptical of this. Von Franz visits Ellen in her room, where she talks about being haunted by Orlok and his impending arrival and how he has been haunting her mind and dreams since she was a child. She asks if evil comes from within, or from beyond.

Orlok stows away on a ship inside crates filled with the dirt that he came from, along with plague rats. He eventually breaks free and begins to slaughter the crew mates one by one before the ship crashes into the harbor of Wisborg.

Thomas makes his way back to Ellen, but Orlok is mind-controlling her to speak through her and taunt him. The Count arrives in Wisborg and is taken by an escaped Knock to his new residence. He says that his plans can only be complete if Ellen re-pledges herself to him willingly, as it would not work if he took her by force.

At night, Orlok appears to Ellen in a dream while she sleeps next to Anna. Ellen has come to see Orlok for the monster that he is and refuses to join him. He gives her three nights, beginning that night, to change her mind and divorce Thomas, or he will kill everyone she loves and take the rest of the town with him. When Ellen awakens, she finds Anna on the floor with rats running around her body. Rats continue to spread a plague through Wisborg.

Orlok continues to try and get into Ellen’s mind to push Thomas away, but she has him have rough sex with her in an act of defiance against the Count. At night, Anna hears her daughters screaming and comes to find Orlok feeding off Clara and Louise before he advances toward her, killing Anna and her unborn child. Friedrich later goes to Anna’s tomb in a fit of despair and begins to kiss her, allowing himself to die by catching her disease. Von Franz and Sievers find their bodies and burn them.

Ellen and Von Franz realize that the only way to truly be rid of Orlok is for her to be the one to willingly sacrifice herself. Von Franz leads Thomas and Sievers on a supposed hunt for Orlok. They go to his manor and open his sarcophagus to kill him, but they instead impale Knock, who lies in there. He laments that he was never going to receive the benefits he was promised, as Orlok had only ever cared for taking Ellen. Thomas rushes back to Ellen while Von Franz burns the place to the ground.

Orlok comes to Ellen’s room, as she willingly re-pledges herself to him. He kisses her and lays with her, having sex with her and feeding off her blood until the morning comes. Realizing too late that he has been tricked, Orlok screams in agony as he bleeds to death and shrivels into a corpse, with Ellen holding him as she also starts to die. Thomas makes it back in time to see her alive long enough before she is gone. He weeps as he holds his wife’s body in his arms.

Von Franz concludes by stating that thanks to Ellen’s sacrifice, the rest of the town was spared from the curse of…NOSFERATU.

In 1830's Germany, real estate agent Thomas Hutter leaves his wife Ellen to sell off a castle belonging to the mysterious Count Orlok. Thomas discovers that Orlok is a feared vampire who has his sights set on Ellen, as she pledged herself to him when she was younger since he had been plaguing her mind since she was a child.

Thomas flees from Orlok while Ellen begins to suffer seizures as a result of Orlok's control over her. The Count makes his way to the town of Wisborg on a plague ship, bringing diseased rats with him as he warns Ellen that she has three nights to submit to him, or he will kill everyone she loves. Thomas is helped by Dr. Wilhelm Sievers and Dr. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, as the latter knows of Ellen's connection to the Count and the curse he brings.

Orlok spreads the plague across town and also kills the Hutters' friend Anna Harding and her children, including her unborn baby. Her husband Friedrich is so distraught that he willingly catches the plague to die next to her. Ellen and Von Franz know that the only way to defeat Orlok is for Ellen to sacrifice herself. Von Franz lures Thomas away since he would not allow his wife to be sacrificed, and they end up killing Orlok's servant Herr Knock.

Ellen allows Orlok to lay with her and feed off of her, waiting until the morning comes so that Orlok will be killed by sunlight. Thomas weeps as Ellen lays dead in his arms, but the curse of Nosferatu has been lifted from Wisborg.