Both times I’ve seen Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu on the big screen — the first time on 35mm, the second digital; each in packed houses of squirming audiences — were vaguely ecstatic experiences. On 35mm the film was like an occult artifact, like a magic lantern capturing some older time, peeking in on things which we were perhaps not meant to be seen. I felt overwhelmed by the sound, the shadowed images — “like Rembrandts” a friend of mine said. The detail was overwhelming, the atmosphere beyond unnerving. Like being pitched into a dark storm at the center of which stood real, palpable evil. Then being vomited safely up, exhausted, on the other side. The second time I began to catch smaller things, and I started to appreciate the rhythm of the film. Something which I have yet to see remarked on in reviews of the film is just how wonderfully old-fashioned an entertainment it is. There’s humor, largely through the sheer presence of Willem Dafoe, whose Van Helsing-like character is (importantly) the only one able to give in to the wildness of the story. There are stock jump-scares: an especially horrifying one involves our first full look of the vampire (and, without exaggeration, Bill Skarsgaard’s Count Orlock is one of the most unreally-real special effects I’ve ever seen in a film). And there are moments so archetypal, which so clearly relish the obvious iconism they’re drawing on, that often the audience is left with nothing to do but laugh (somewhat uncomfortably) at how fully the film has committed to it.