You know what's really strange? I saw this movie when I was just starting college, yes I sat down to see this in the infant months of this website and yet I remembered precisely two things about it, jack and shit. I am not typically a dude who forgets movies easily, even the bad ones I hate, so that puzzles me now tremendously. I mean the pure basic idea of what if there was no actor named Max Schreck and director F.W. Murnau got a real vampire to play Count Orlok has been a myth long before this movie came to be made, and to take an iconic piece of film history, horror history, a film that we can now say is over a century old and give it a spin is nothing short of a testament to the power of that film. Now granted the director E. Elias Merhige doesn't go for the Tim Burton way when he was making Ed Wood and be totally faithful to the sets and camera placement, but to view a semi-making of for a movie that premiered almost 80 years before the fact is cool! John Malkovich plays this utter mad scientist, almost akin to Peter Cushing's Frankenstein where he is willing to sacrifice human lives for the creation of this moving picture and hand over my heart in the last scene of the movie is more scary than Orlok! Speaking of which, Willem Dafoe as "Max Schreck" what fascinating and yet effective casting, embellishing the role of cinema's first vampire and giving him a bit of a tragic twist while still being odd and unearthly, and upon hearing because of this particular performance is what got him on the casting call for the Green Goblin makes me all the happier this movie exists. I'll freely admit the credits for this film's opening threw curveball after curveball at me, it has Cary Elwes, Eddie Izzard, and Udo Kier in it as members of the cast and crew along with the little fact that Nicolas Cage had a hand in producing this movie and we're talking post Vampire's Kiss Nic Cage here! You just can't make this shit up. For a movie just a notch past 90 minutes it has a steady pace and the writing isn't grand but has moments of brilliance particularly for Murnau's dialogue, his thesis if you will on the power of cinema and what it truly means to him is both enlightening and provocative regardless of whether the legend himself said it or not. Solid sets and costume reproductions from the 20s classic, very good acting from all involved (even if Cary's accent is iffy at times), decent music score, and you can tell this is definitely more a passion project film than a financially lucrative film for the studio which I applaud all the more and the actors have fun with the material. Sometimes you just need to make a movie for a purpose other than monetary gain, and while I fully believe this is more of a cult film that hasn't really got it's flowers yet it's not bad at all and I can indeed recommend it if you're a vampire completist or just a person who likes some fiction in your historicals. 2.5 stars, 7/10 from me! And I'm knocking another off the list with Werner Herzog's Nosferatu next time.
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