Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
The Ending of Nosferatu, Explained
Let's take a closer look at how Robert Eggers' vampire epic concludes its dark tale.
**SPOILER WARNING!! Spoilers below for Robert Eggers' Nosferatu!!**
He has finally come. Robert Egger's Nosferatu, a visionary reimagining of the 1922 German silent film of the same name, is in theaters now, giving the world a good look at Bill Skarsgard's Count Orlok at last. With just days left to go in the year, one of the most-anticipated genre films in recent memory is now available for the world to see, which means a lot of film fans will spend their holidays poring over every detail.
And that includes the film's ending. So, let's take a closer look at how Eggers' version of the classic tale wraps up, and what it means in the context of the larger narrative.
What happens at the end of Nosferatu?
Just like the original film (itself an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula), Nosferatu is the story of a vampire who terrorizes not just a town, but a family, as he becomes obsessed with one particular person. In this film, that person is Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), the wife of estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), who's been dispatched to Transylvania to sell a house in the German city of Wisborg to Count Orlok.
Where the film starts to differ is in how the obsession Orlok develops for Ellen begins. Many years ago, during a time of despair, a younger Ellen called out in the dark for some kind of supernatural support, a "guardian angel" who would watch over her in her time of need. What she didn't know at the time was that her urgent pleas opened a supernatural door, a door through which Orlok could telepathically enter her mind, sometimes possessing her and driving her into fits of madness.
These fits diminished when Ellen met Thomas and found something like true happiness, but what didn't diminish was Orlok's desire for Ellen. So, through his servant Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), Orlok arranged for Thomas to act as his estate agent to buy a property in Wisborg, thus assuring that he'd get physically and telepathically closer to Ellen while also trying to get Thomas out of the picture.
Though Thomas manages to escape Orlok's castle and flee to a convent, he is desperate to get home and save Ellen as Orlok makes his way to Germany. Together with his friend Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), their associate Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson), and Sievers' old teacher Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe), Thomas sets out to defeat Orlok and save his wife.
But the connection between the vampire and Ellen is far too deep, and even Von Franz and his unconventional approach isn't strong enough to defeat it through brute strength. It takes hidden knowledge, knowledge Von Franz eventually discovers in a book left among Herr Knock's belongings. It seems that only a pure-hearted woman can defeat the vampire by holding him to her at first light. When Ellen discovers this, she makes the decision, without Thomas' knowledge, to lure Orlok to her bed and seduce him.
Though the men eventually realize that she has deceived them and they try to save her, it's ultimately too late. Ellen holds Orlok to her, letting him drink her blood, until the sun rises and kills him. Drained and lifeless, the vampire collapses on top of her, and Ellen has just enough time to see Thomas again before she dies.
What the ending of Nosferatu means
Eggers' restructuring of Nosferatu, placing Ellen Hutter at the center of the story for its entirety rather than just its resolution, has dramatic implications for the plot. On the surface, it's still a story of a group of people banding together to fight a vampire, only to find that the woman they're trying to protect is the one who must make the ultimate sacrifice, but by placing Ellen in the position of having summoned Orlok in the first place, the film shifts its entire story.
As a young woman, Ellen is tormented by what appears to be depressive episodes, to the point that her only hope seems to be calling out for some unseen force. As an adult, she finds happiness in marriage, but the episodes quickly return, and the men around her, the entire society around her, is helpless to stop them. Ellen is treated as a strange case, a woman beyond conventional medicine, and essentially becomes a reclusive, forlorn stranger to everyone around her. It's not until late in the film that men in her life realize what's really going on, and by then it's too late. Ellen is doomed, not just by Orlok's presence, but by the world around her which simply does not grasp what she's going through. It's an ordinary, common, easily graspable horror of the time, only amplified by the presence of supernatural darkness, and it makes Nosferatu a very particular kind of Gothic tragedy.
Nosferatu is now in theaters. Get tickets at Fandango.
