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What Is Exsanguination? Nosferatu's Gory Change from the Original, Explained
Nosferatu's vampire takes on his victims in a way many vampire movie fans haven't seen before.
**SPOILER WARNING!! Spoilers below for Robert Eggers' Nosferatu!!**
Robert Eggers' Nosferatu (in theaters now) is an epic tribute to one of the most important horror films ever made: F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent horror classic of the same name. But even as Eggers honors one of his own great cinematic influences, he puts his own spin on the vampire classic, and on vampire cinema in general.
That means that, for all the homages and influences Nosferatu wears on its sleeve, there are also departures, things which allow Eggers to play with vampire lore in his own way, while also digging back into the genre's roots. That includes the way this particular vampire goes about attacking his victims.
How Nosferatu's Count Orlok feeds
The 2024 version of the vampiric Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) shares a name, a homeland, and a motive with his 1922 counterpart. He also shares many of the same powers, like using his shadow as a physical extension of his body. Where he differs, apart from his basic appearance, is in the way that he attacks his victims and ultimately chooses to feed on them.
Like virtually every major cinematic vampire to come along since, the 1922 version of Nosferatu feeds on his victims by biting their necks, accessing the veins in one of the most vulnerable parts of the body and drawing out blood. Count Orlok's victims die by exsanguination, the draining of blood from their body until that body can no longer function.
In the 2024 version of Nosferatu, exsanguination is still the primary cause of death for Orlok's victims, but this iteration of the vampire doesn't go for the neck. Instead, as we see when he corners and feeds on Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) and later feeds on Hutter's wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), in the film's final scene, Orlok punches his teeth down into his victim's chest and sucks blood directly from the heart. It's a striking change to vampiric imagery, but it has its roots in some very old folklore.
Why Nosferatu's Count Orlok bites his victims' hearts instead of their necks
Watching Orlok, often unclothed, clamp down on the chests of his victims and pull their blood out with pure animal frenzy is striking and terrifying, and definitely helps to make Nosferatu a memorable experience. But it's not just a change Eggers made for the sake of putting a new spin on an old idea. In his research into vampire legends, Eggers actually found that feeding from the heart, or at least associations of vampires applying pressure to the heart, is a very old concept.
"Now obviously you can't pierce a breastbone, so it doesn't really make sense. It makes much more sense to drink someone's blood from their neck," Eggers told SFX magazine.
He continued, "But in folklore, when people are experiencing vampiric attacks it's similar to old hag syndrome [a colloquial term for sleep paralysis] where you have pressure on your chest, so people interpreted it as vampires drinking blood from their chest. But there are also folk vampires who didn't drink blood, but just fornicated with their widows until their widows died from it. So I think it's all part of the source material…"
So, while it's not strictly anatomically logical, Eggers went with drinking from the heart, and it adds an emotional punch to the whole vampiric story. After all, what's more resonant in a Gothic tale of longing and obsession than a monster who literally pierces your heart and bleeds you dry?
Nosferatu is now in theaters. Get tickets at Fandango.
