To borrow an old internet gag, if I had a penny for every time Nicholas Hoult played a guy who falls in league with a bloodthirsty vampire and ends up in way over his head, I’d have two pennies - which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. But where the first, the occasionally amusing but largely forgettable Renfield, sputtered into obscurity, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a fiery and fluid-drenched love letter to both the Gothic tradition and the early days of cinema that burrows under the skin. This incarnation of the looming Count Orlok, here played by Bill Skarsgaard, oozes a grotesque sensuality (as well as just general ooze), as he turns his attentions first to Thomas, Hoult’s hapless estate agent sent to his castle to sell him a house, and then to his doting bride Ellen (Lily Rose-Depp), plagued since childhood with a seemingly inexplicable ‘melancholy’.

Attempting to remake F.W Murnau’s 1922 original, one of the defining works of German Expressionist filmmaking, has apparently been a passion project of Eggers’ for some time, and it shows in the faithfulness of its aesthetic; the cross-strewn beaches lifted directly from its source; the town of Wisburg’s jutting, cluttered angularity; or the shifts from lighting so cold and desaturated as to appear near-monochrome to scenes of such deeply lit warmth as to resemble the sepia tone of old film stock. It’s especially potent in the gorgeously staged and almost dreamlike approach taken by Hoult’s character Thomas to Orlok’s castle, gliding into a sinister carriage as though moved by an unseen force. And it marries beautifully with the capabilities of modern cinematography; there are plenty of static shots, but the camera’s fluid tracking work as it swoops and glides with each characters’ movement creates an almost predatory feeling of observation and scrutiny, as though something is always circling. Any good remake must understand its source material enough not just to replicate it, but build upon it - more on that later.

Hoult is on fine form throughout; his shifts from earnest, gentlemanly courtesy to shivering, sweat-drenched, abject horror ensure he’s well on his way to becoming one of Hollywood’s go-to scream kings. Willem Dafoe, another Eggers’ staple, is also a treat as Albin Von Franz, a disgraced scientist fixated on the occult (it seems as soon as any movie needs a slightly dotty mad scientist type these days, someone hits the Willem Dafoe Signal). And Simon McBurney as Orlok’s servant Herr Knock is a skin-crawling standout, though I hope no pigeons were harmed in the filming of his scenes.

But the biggest plaudits have to be given to our unhappy couple, Skarsgaard’s Count Orlok and Depp’s Ellen. Skarsgaard spends a significant portion of his screen time shrouded in shadow, giving prominence to his powerful voice work - Orlok sounds like his every word is being dredged up from some kind of terrible furnace. He’s not quite as haunting as ethereal, unblinking Max Schrek, but that wouldn’t necessarily fit the tone Eggers is trying to set. Enhanced by his putrefying prosthetics, this Orlok is a hulking, authoritarian presence; more sensual, but a sensuality warped into something grasping and groping, intent only on acquisition (he is still an aristocrat looking to buy a second house, after all).

Which brings us to Ellen, the indisputable star of the show. How Lily Rose Depp didn’t earn an Academy nod for this performance is beyond me, because she brings such depth and dignity to a character previously not granted much interiority. There’s something about Depp’s face that carries so much constrained sadness, frustration and desire in every microexpression, right down to the veins in her temples, as her ‘melancholy’ is poked, prodded and minimised by the world around her; then we hit the points of hysteria, her body jerking and contorting like a ragdoll, her moans indistinguishable between agony and rapture, her eyes rolled back in her skull and her tongue lolling like a questing slug. It’s Exorcist-level in its commitment, and it’s crucial to establishing Egger’s biggest departure from his source material; his vindication of feminine sexuality. We’ve already seen with the ending of The Witch that Eggers is a noted champion of ‘women’s wrongs’, and this is no exception.

When the lights went up on Nosferatu, someone behind me remarked, “Why was it so sexual? Why were there so many breasts?”, and it was the closest I’ve come to having an argument with a stranger in the cinema. Eggers’ Nosferatu is sexual, yes, but its eroticism is rooted in anxieties that lie at the very heart of Gothic fiction, anxieties that Eggers plays on with a distinctly contemporary lens. Throughout the film, Ellen is constantly subject to outdated patriarchal attitudes to female mental health and sexuality, repressed and often literally restrained - and it’s not like some of these attitudes haven’t survived into modern medicine.

But as the film makes clear, denying the reality of our ‘darkness’ can only cause further harm. Von Franz points out the hubris of assuming the hazy light of perceived logic and reason can answer all things, and it’s no coincidence that some of the sequences where Ellen is in most danger take place in the warmest light, surrounded by confounded men unable to think outside received wisdom. Unlike her counterpart in the original, Ellen is framed as near-divine not because of her purity, but because of her sensuality; at one point Von Franz compares her to the goddess Isis. Count Orlok is Ellen’s dark mirror, demonic where she is divine. Enticing and yet terrible, he is the monster that the world convinces Ellen to see her sexuality as, warped by patriarchy and explicitly referred to as her ‘shame’. Only by meeting the darkness within her on her own terms, communing with it rather than repressing it, is she at last able to defang that shame and banish it for good. So yes, that’s why there are “so many breasts”.

I’ve seen several critics ask why the need for another Nosferatu, and I would argue precisely because of departures like this. This is exactly what I look for in an adaptation - one that clearly has a deep knowledge and reverence of its heritage, while carving out a clear and distinct identity for itself. I may not have the bites to prove it, but I know that Nosferatu left its mark on me.