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(Deep Cuts) What Nosferatu, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man Reveal About the 2020s

By. Bee Delores

 

Film critic Hans Wollenberg once raved about Nosferatu (1922), describing it as a “sensation” in the March 11, 1922 issue of Lichtbild-Bühne. “It radically leaves the beaten track of love stories and mechanistic adventures that have been rehashed a hundred times. It draws on an unconstrained fantasy whose source is the gruesome superstition of the vampire who drinks human blood.”

It took 102 years to get it right, but Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (2024) remake revitalizes a long-dormant IP with a deadly gothic spin. Bill Skarsgård turns Count Orlok into a beastly, mustachioed, and sexually perverse being who preys upon Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) with a deeply ravenous appetite. It’s certainly not your great-grandparents’ Nosferatu, but it serves as a lightning rod to the current social and political moment. Eggers leans into our collective desperation and hunger for something to wash away the anxieties over the ghastly dystopian reality and the troubling loneliness we all felt during the pandemic.

Nosferatu is one of many remakes of classic pre-1950s horror films that have hit theaters over the last two years. Even given the Nostalgic Era we’re currently engaged in, it’s fairly odd to reach back 100 years to excavate iconic IPs. But in doing so, we draw closer to understanding the human experience as it exists in the 21st Century. Nosferatu and The Last Voyage of the Demeter (directed by André Øvredal) capture dark desires buried within each of us, as contained through rigid societal structures, abuses of power, and suffocating isolation, not only caused by the pandemic but also by a growing angst in today’s youth over stripped rights, high inflation, and unchecked mental health.

Similarly, The Wolf Man (directed by Leigh Whannell) sinks its claws into the infection of misinformation, deranged delusions of the alt-right, and how quickly the denial of facts contaminates our reality. The 1941 original arrived when the U.S. officially entered World War II, following the Pearl Harbor bombing. The escalated political and social tensions, including women turning to factory work while men were drafted for the war, contributed significantly to the fear of speaking out on important issues, giving birth to the Silent Generation.

In Maggie Gyllenhaal’s remarkable The Bride! reinvention and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, matters of women’s autonomy, speaking truth to power, and the frailty of the human condition throb at the center of both. Particularly, the overturning of Roe v Wade appears ghost-like inside of The Bride!, starring Jessie Buckley as the titular character seeking love, her own voice, and how to fight against a patriarchal society. In James Whale’s 1935 classic, Bride of Frankenstein, The Bride spurns the monster’s advances in an uproarious caterwaul, a rather progressive action for the time period. Curiously, the remake sees The Bride falling in love with the monster, but it’s all on her own terms, rather than upholding archaic beliefs of women’s subservience to men.

With the 2025 Frankenstein, del Toro explores the exploitation of man, the suffering of being othered in the world, and what it means to find the truth for yourself. Whale’s 1931 film, conversely, makes the monster out to be, well, a feral monster with insatiable bloodlust. You feel empathy for Dr. Frankenstein in many ways, including the tragic death of Ludwig’s (Michael Mark) young daughter Maria (Marilyn Harris). It’s a tale about scientific disillusionment, man’s innate failings and desperation to play God, and how innocent people always pay the price. Del Toro’s version clashes with these ideas, instead opting for a sympathetic focus through the monster’s eyes. In the 2020s, that means something immense and profound. The monster isn’t a monster at all, just a product of man’s brutality.

Want a deeper look at Lee Cronin's reinvention of Universal's iconic monster? Check out our review of The Mummy, a film that transforms an ancient curse into a story about generational trauma, family, and breaking destructive cycles.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy zooms in on these ideas, as well, but through a generational lens and stopping such harmful cycles from repeating. When Katie (Natalie Grace) goes missing, her father Charlie (Jack Reynor) and mother Larissa (Laia Costa) do everything in their power to find her. But investigators fail Katie. Eight years later, Katie is discovered being transferred inside an Egyptian sarcophagus. She’s been wrapped in strips of cloth, etched with an ancient Egyptian language meant to contain the evil coursing inside her body.

Charlie and Larissa aren’t about to lose their daughter again. Charlie begs the mummy’s demonic spirit to take him as the new host. Later, Larissa teams up with lead detective Dalia (May Calamawy) to transplant the entity into The Magician (Hayat Kamille), Layla’s mother and the one who started the cycle over again. Millennial-aged, Charlie and Larissa end toxic social behaviors through intense determination, vowing not to succumb to the same patterns of previous generations.

During a time of great social and political upheaval, horror filmmakers reach back into history to excavate many of the stories that laid the foundation for the genre. We’re living proof of history repeating itself (e.g., Trump’s swift rise to fascist power, immigrant internment camps, and the witchhunting of trans people). By reimagining films like Frankenstein, Nosferatu, and The Wolf Man, we see reality as it truly is: a poisoned trap from which only we can save ourselves.

Frankenstein's monster has spent nearly a century defining what audiences imagine when they hear the word "monster." To explore how one small word helped transform him into a horror icon, check out Katie Weiss's fascinating linguistic analysis of Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).