Film reviews: Nickel Boys | Nosferatu | We Live in Time

The first-person use of the camera may not be a new filmmaking technique, but RaMell Ross takes it to a whole new level in Nickel Boys, writes Alistair Harkness

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in Nickel Boys | Orion Pictures / © 2024 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Nickel Boys (15) ★★★★★

Nosferatu (15) ★★

We Live in Time (15) ★★

Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel Nickel Boys gets a pleasingly radical adaptation courtesy of artist/filmmaker RaMell Ross. Set in the Deep South of the 1960s just as the civil rights movement is giving people of colour (false) hope that the country is changing for the better, its tale of Black friendship in a segregated reform school may be a harrowing indictment of institutional racism and violence, but Ross’s decision to filter the story exclusively through the first person point-of-view of its two protagonists — the shy and academically gifted Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and the more worldly Turner (Brandon Wilson) — immerses us in their world in quite an extraordinary way, providing a kind of sensory map through the characters’ interior lives as they confront a rigged system that places no value on them as human beings.

For a good chunk of the film we barely even know what Elwood looks like thanks to Ross limiting our view of him to those images caught in reflected surfaces; that is until he meets Turner and we start seeing the world through his eyes for a while. This first-person use of the camera is not a new technique: Raymond Chandler adaptation Lady in the Lake did it all the way back in 1947. But Nickel Boys takes it to another level, with Ross using it to subtly tease out a twist in the book that reorients what we’re watching while the film itself jumps back and forth in time to piece together the murderous cover-up that Whitehead’s novel uses to frame the story. It’s unlike anything else out there.

Willem Dafoe and Lily-Rose Depp in Nosferatu | Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

Robert Eggers last film, The Northman, hinted that there was a more conventional filmmaker lurking within the uncompromising arthouse auteur who broke through with horror curios The Witch and The Lighthouse. Sadly, Eggers’ new take on Nosferatu does little to dispel this notion. A lavish remake/re-imagining of FW Murnau’s seminal, silent and unofficial interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it comes replete with expressionistic flourishes, black-and-white flashbacks and gnarly-looking make-up effects, yet it’s so overwrought and sombre it can’t help but feel like a joyless knock-off of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 take on Dracula.

That film at least had the courage to be operatic and campy and erotic all at once; this one fails even to be the least bit scary. This is despite Eggers casting Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlock and having him deliver his lines in the booming, syntactically elaborate native tongue of Orlock’s Transylvanian homeland while caked in creepy make-up.

As the film opens Orlock is forging a telepathic erotic connection with Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen, but it never gets this strange or freaky again, with Eggers largely following the familiar beats of the Dracula story, albeit setting it mostly in Germany in the late 19th century. Nicholas Hoult co-stars as Ellen’s husband, a callow real estate agent who’s coerced into doing Orlock’s bidding in Germany. Returning to find his wife in a state of disarray, he enlists the help of Willem Defoe’s Van Helsing-like vampire expert and, together, they have to reckon with the skepticism of a plague-riddled populace who don’t believe such creatures exist.

The film undeniably has some good moments and there’s something a little sly, too, about casting Hoult and the always-reliable Defoe given the former’s recent turn in horror comedy Renfield and the latter’s casting as original Nosferatu star Max Schreck in Shadow of a Vampire. But Eggers frequently lets his sense of style get the better of him, draining the lifeblood out of the film.

A terminal illness weepy starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, We Live in Time rejigs the old Love Story formula (there’s even an ice-skating homage) by fracturing the chronology of their characters’ relationship in a bid to emphasise the value of living in the moment rather than constantly planning for the future. The reasons why are spelled out early on: Pugh’s ambitious gourmet chef Almut decides to forgo a second round of chemo after the ovarian cancer that has hitherto been in remission comes back. She’d rather spend six good months embracing everything her life with Garfield’s Tobias, their daughter and her career have to offer than endure yet more debilitating treatment that might not even work.

Thenceforth the film tells their story out of order, filling in the key moments of their relationship — how they met, how they fell in love, the precarious circumstances of their daughter’s arrival — while simultaneously underscoring the cruelty of knowing Almut’s time is running out. It’s an intriguing approach, and at one point the film even leaves us to ponder whether Almut’s decision to try for kids to placate Tobias’ desire for children might actually have cost her her recovery. Mostly, though, Brooklyn director John Crowley smoothes off any such rough edges, with the film ultimately selling out Pugh’s character in its bid to make Garfield’s more saintly.

Nickel Boys is in cinemas from 3 January; Nosferatu and We Live in Time are in cinemas from 1 January