Written by Nick Doermann

The misery-season of the dead, post-Christmas cold is finally upon us. Beautiful snow that once served the purpose of reflecting rainbow lights and keeping us in our cozy little cottages now makes us slip and fall on our ways to work and find its way into our greasy shoes.Truly, there is nothing like watching the fictional misery of horror movies that’s so good for making us forget about the real life miseries happening right under our noses.

Hey, do me a favor and pretend that the intro sounded less dark than it actually did, will you?

Anyways, the past four or five months have been surprising, to say the least, in terms of horror movie releases. An expected Autumn wave of horror movies cashing in on the upcoming Halloween hype just sort of…didn’t happen. Sure we got our Terrifier Threes and our Alien Romuli – but where was the new stuff? Where were the headliners? The box office slammers that we’ve seen in the few years prior? I was craving some delicious, al dente horror cinema but instead got a bunch of overcooked straight-to-video slop based on old disney characters for most of Fall. All that whining aside, a curveball came around later in the year. A lot of the most interesting horror projects started popping up in the wintertime season. Starting around mid November, streaming services began releasing some really promising stuff (one particular stuff will be covered in the blog soon – stay tuned!), and by Christmastime, us horror fans had a whole sack of haunted holiday goodies to sink our teeth into. Of course, the topic of this particular blog is the heavy-hitting bloodsucker hailing from cloudy Transylvania: COUNT ORLOOOOOOOOK!

Count Orlock is the guy from Nosferatu by the way. The movie I’m gonna write about is Nosferatu. 

Nosferatu – Everybody knows about this story. Whether you’ve read the book, seen the original German film, or saw the count flickering the lights in his brief Spongebob Squarepants appearance, I am certain that you would recognize the monstrous, shadowy vampire. Personally, when I saw that Robert Eggers was making a Nosferatu movie, I was expecting his personal brand of “nothing really happens in this movie but it looks cool,” but this time in a movie where a guy does the blood sucking. However, upon watching the movie just after Christmas, I realized that Nosferatu and Mr. Eggers were a match as good for each other as a wooden stake and a garlic bulb.

To expand upon my witty and charming simile, I need to take us back to previous projects of Mr. Eggers. The ones that come to mind are The Lighthouse and The VVitch (pronounced Vuh-vitch if you’re curious). These are movies where nothing really happens – they both have narratives, but they could be summarized in just a few sentences, like “two guys go crazy” or “queen’s gambit turns evil.” Rather than trying to tell a grand tale, Eggers opts for atmosphere-driven movies with both of these projects, something he is excellent at. Whether or not these types of movies are your cup of tea, you cannot deny that the atmosphere is incredible. Without having characters explain it, Robert Eggers is able to create an overwhelming sense of wrongness. In his movies, it always feels like there is intense, unexplainable evil lurking behind every decision. Therefore, when this style is paired with a story that has already been written and told multiple times, the result is nothing short of fantastic.

Nosferatu is a movie where a LOT happens. There’s vampire affairs, rat swarms, whimsical scientists, and even greasy goblin landlords. At the center of it all, of course, is Count Orlok, the bearer of the moniker which shares the film’s name. Everything that has to do with this character emanates pure evil. Even when he is not directly on the screen, he has an influence that feels dark and horrible. Without getting into spoiler-filled specifics, there is no point when he is on screen where he does not seem like the most evil being that could be created by the clay of Satan. The man certainly lives up to the expectations of embodying the black plague. When Nicholas Hoult journeys to the Count’s castle, the entire thing feels like an ethereal, waking nightmare. The vampire’s territory is shrouded in a sort of luminous darkness – a sea of danger that makes you question how there could be so much more movie left.

So, to summarize – go see Nosferatu. It’s the best Eggman movie because stuff actually happens in it. My opinions are correct.

Looking forward, I’ve been rather intrigued by a movie that’s supposed to come out in the next few months. My relationship with this one is odd. My first, second, third, fourth, etc. impressions of the movie have been an emotional rollercoaster, with half of the qualities of the movie making me think it’s going to be another garbage movie, and the other half pointing towards something truly great. This movie, after all this setup, is The Monkey, slated to release on February 21st. 

I noticed a few things when I started paying attention to this movie. The first is its potentially unfortunate placement as a horror comedy on advertising. Now, I would never claim that there is anything innately wrong with a blend of horror and comedy – in fact, I think that when done right, the two can complement each other quite well. Take a look at Return of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, or the ever-present Killer Klowns from Outer Space for some examples. However, I think that this has to be handled with a lot of tact, as when done wrong, it can fail miserably. Not to sound like a geezer, but the horror comedies of the past several years have not had as many hits. Sometimes they can be great movies, but not actually horror movies at all (Lisa Frankenstein), or horror/comedies that just aren’t that good (M3gan [pronounced “muh-three-gan”]). The other concerning element is the premise itself – namely, the “haunted item that makes you die” trope. From the trailers, it seems like the titular monkey is just a haunted toy that kills people that are near it. Does that mean the monkey is cursed? Does it mean that the monkey is haunted by a demon? Probably! Sounds kinda boring either way.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID – This movie still can’t find its way off of my radar. First of all, it’s a Stephen King story. For all who don’t know about Mr. King’s work, he’s written such iconic tales as The Langoliers and Bag of Bones. He’s a big name in horror, to put it lightly, so anything written by him has a bit of a gold standard. On top of that, the guy directing it is Osgood Perkins – the Longlegs guy! The Nick Cage Longlegs awesome guy! I loved that movie! So yeah. The guy who did Longlegs is doing The Monkey. That gives me much higher hopes than I might otherwise. On top of that, Hayden, my cohost, seems to be pretty optimistic about it, and he tends to have much less joy in his soul than I do. Here’s a picture of him:

Well, anyways, that was this episode of the Haunted Horror Hour Blog. As always, follow our actual show @hauntedhorrorhour on Instagram and tune into this blog to learn more nonsense about horror movies. Listen to the Haunted Horror Hour on 91.7fm at 6pm CST!