Nosferatu starring Bill Skarsgård is a full-tilt gothic remake of ...

Like many surviving films of the silent era, it's a miracle that Nosferatu hasn't been lost to time.

Fast facts about Nosferatu

What: A faithful remake of a genre-defining, Dracula-inspired horror classic

Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe

Directed by: Robert Eggers

Likely to make you feel: Chills

Conceived in 1922 by German Expressionist F. W. Murnau as an unlicensed Dracula knock-off, all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed following a copyright lawsuit. Yet the film lived on in archives across the world, and endures as one of the foundational texts of horror cinema.

In the century since, its nightmarish gothic imagery has captured the imagination of countless filmmakers — among them Robert Eggers, whose directing career can be traced back to a high school production of the film.

Eggers' Nosferatu remake, a project 10 years in the making, finally releases at a time in which Count Dracula has been well and truly defanged in popular culture.

Thanks to the public domain, the bloodthirsty count has been frequently repurposed as the butt of affectionate parodies (What We Do in the Shadows, SpongeBob SquarePants) or as action movie fodder (Renfield, Dracula Untold). Zombies, ghosts, aliens and psychotic clowns have succeeded in muscling the undead icon out of the horror genre.

The task of revitalising one of cinema's most ubiquitous icons is no easy feat, but Dracula fans can rest easy in their coffins: this latest iteration of Nosferatu restores some long-overdue menace to its source material, bringing its director's flair for slow-burn portent and old-school theatricality into a grisly fairytale that reeks of sex, rancid flesh and 2,000 much-hyped rats.

Nosferatu's story once again takes place in the fictional German town of Wisborg in 1838, kicking off with the real estate deal from hell. While still in the afterglow of his new marriage to Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), estate agent Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, in typically sweaty, panicky form), is tasked with selling a long-abandoned home to Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), a wealthy recluse stowed away in the Carpathian Mountains.

After ignoring the folkloric superstitions harboured by the Transylvanian locals — a perilous mistake in Eggers' films — Thomas finally makes it to Orlok's castle with the assistance of a driverless carriage, and discovers his imposing, long-fingered client is a little too keen to tend to a small cut on his hand. Thomas is only the entrée; Orlok has eyes on Ellen, and soon descends upon Wisborg with a devastating plague.

One of the most significant changes made to Stoker's text in the 1922 original was its reconfiguring of Mina Harker as Ellen, who ends up playing a more active role in defeating Orlok. Eggers diverges from his predecessors by stealthily revealing Nosferatu to be Ellen's story, though finds himself out of his depths.

Back home, Ellen's dreams are surrendered to visions of Orlok and her husband. The film makes explicit not just her clairvoyance, but a prior psychic connection to the fearsome vampire that's rekindled upon Thomas's physical encounter, inducing fits of somnambulism that erupt into orgasmic paroxysms.

Nosferatu's overt eroticism is all the more provocative in its revolting rendering of Orlok. Forget about the silken glamour of Bela Lugosi, or Gary Oldman's shape-shifting seducer — Skarsgård's villain is presented as a rank, reanimated carcass, embellished with a formidable moustache and ensconced in a fur coat.

Depp's physical performance is undoubtedly committed, impressive in the sheer vigour of her otherworldly movements. Her possessed convulsions emanate repressed desire and emotional laceration, reaching for the unholy delirium of Isabelle Adjani, while never feeling truly unmoored. Any traces of genuine freakiness are entirely divorced from the character of Ellen, who's only ever interesting on a subconscious level.

Willem Dafoe, on the other hand, is incredibly fun as the Van Helsing-esque Albin, a mad occult scientist who gets to whip out his magnifying glass and gravely whisper about bearing witness to phenomena "that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother's womb".

Eggers' films have long been a tug of war between his staid technical excellence (replete with painstaking historical detail), and his lust for the carnal pleasures of genre cinema. Though his films inspire more admiration than any real emotion, this full-tilt gothic fantasy gives way to some of his most ravishing work yet, endowed with mellifluous camera work, a thunderous score and crepuscular lighting attuned to the story's spectral wavelength.

Moreover, it's refreshing to watch a splashy horror throwback whose influences extend further back than the 80s. Eggers' historical fetishism, fussy as it is, undeniably helps to sell a sense of verisimilitude amid the blood-sucking, possession and plague. At the same time, such lush production values feel ill-matched with the film's murky, desaturated palette; its night-time sequences may as well be black and white.

Eggers' cold, controlled direction can feel ill-suited for a retelling of the Dracula mythos — but for all that it lacks in emotional richness, Nosferatu offers a tantalising taste of the grotesque.

Nosferatu is currently showing in cinemas.