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Wisborg, Germany, 1838 – Thomas Hutter is a promising real estate apprentice appointed travel six weeks to the Carpathian Alps to settle on Wisborg real estate for the reclusive and mysterious Count Orlok. Thomas Hutter is also a newlywed, married to the lovely Ellen Hutter whom together Thomas plans to solidify their proper social status with the wealth of this trip away from his wife despite her pleas for him to stay. Upon meeting Count Orlok in his dark castle, Thomas is overcome by his host’s undying evil presence that confines him to the grounds while Orlok psychically holds spellbound Ellen’s mind to a fretful state. When Thomas escapes, he makes it back home at the same time Orlok arrives by ship that brings a plague of rats to the city of Wiseborg as well as a nasty blood-loss disease affecting population. As Thomas warns of Orlok’s intentions, discredited Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz knowledge of the occult sees through the rat-plague and into the dark heart that has cast its shadow over the city and into Ellen Hutter’s soul.

The acclaimed folkloric horror director of “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” sinks his teeth into one of the most renowned classical villains of our time, a vampire known to most as Dracula and revised, at times, up to the Robert Eggers take on the timeless “Nosferatu” tale. Eggers’s 2024 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel and the 1922 F.W. Murnau silent picture, “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” written by Henrik Galeen, is also penned by the director, revamped to tell both classic narratives in a way that is his own and that’s reflective of his slow burn gothic dread style. “Nosferatu” is a Focus Features presentation from the productions of Birch Hill Road Entertainment and Studio 8 as well as produced by Eggers alongside the industry esteemed Chris Columbus (“Home Alone,” “Harry Potter”) and daughter Eleanor Columbus under their Maiden Voyage Pictures co-founded company.

Stepping into the tall, slender, blood slurping role of the titular character, under a full-body prosthetic suit of what is essentially a rotting corpse with a wicked mustache, is Bill Skarsgård, the actor who is quickly rising to the top of heavy makeup and effects characters while making the star-studded Skarsgård name synonymous with horror in his breakout film playing the maniacal demon-clown Pennywise in the film remake adaptation of Stephen King’s “It.” Skarsgård’s baby face is completely enveloped in the ancient Transylvania nobleman Count Orlok with a high-bridge nose, protruding and high cheekbones, a vertically elongated face, and a sparse hair straggling through presumably a latex mock of decaying skin. Skarsgård also modulates his vocal chords to reach deep, resonating levels that gives Count Orlok an additional tier of terror. Undoubtedly, Count Orlok is an omnipotent, powerfully entrenched presence brought to existence by Skarsgård and accentuated and elevated even further by Lily-Rose Depp in Orlok’s obsessive muse of Ellen Hutter. Through choreographed body manipulation and control, the daughter of Johnny Depp has since put the gum-chewing, wise-cracking, convenient story clerk “Yoga Hosers” role behind to redefine herself as an austere period and physical role actress willing to go the extra mile for the story. Nicholas Hoult (“Warm Bodies,” “Mad Max: Fury Road”) updates his Dracula film resume with another after having just come off the heels of playing the titular character in “Renfield” to Nicholas Cage’s grotesquely campy version of the Prince of Darkness, but there’s nothing intentionally campy about this Stoker story nor his role as Thomas Hutter with first-hand experience of Count Orlok’s monstrous dysphoric plague in what would be, too, another physical, yet less so, role for Hoult as a concerned husband fighting for his wife. Speaking of roles, or films, that come around again for certain actors, Willem Dafoe passes the torch of Count Orlok from his Max Schreck performance in “Shadow of a Vampire” and takes on the elder Professor von Franz, a once esteemed learned man of science and knowledge now a discredited scientific explorer of the occult brought in to see to Ellen Hutter’s feverish nightmares and hallucinations. Dafoe’s just as spasmodic and expressive as ever to be a part of those knowledgeable opposition of the vampyr realm, giving prominence to the character Dafoe has bordering as a mad genius of sorts with eccentric behavior that never allows to be compassionate or otherwise emotionally driven, like a true scientist. Principal cast rounds out with Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kickass”), Ralph Ineson (“The Witch”), Emma Corrin (“Deadpool & Wolverine”), and Simon McBurney (“The Conjuring 2”).

As much as Eggers wanted to make “Nosferatu” a scary film while staying to the themes of obsession and Stoker and Munrau’s core elements, the film only manages to scare up a couple of true moments of hold-your-breath terror with panning shots and swelling scores that composition a seat jumping jolt. Like most of Egger’s previous work, a continuous course of dread, which the filmmaker produces well in droves, meanderingly streams through the narrative that slowly builds with each closing in step Count Orlok takes toward obtaining Ellen Hutter’s willing submission to him. Between the 1922 and 2024, both films play the love-triangle card of a married couple’s happiness being compromised by a tall and dark outsider entrancing, enthralling the wife, diverting her loyalty by any means possible. In this case, those means are to blackmail her by holding the city hostage to plague of rats and draining her of the loved ones surrounding her. However, the genesis of Orlok’s obsession is built upon brittle sticks with a prologue that hamstrings a powerful, psychic ability unwittingly used by Ellen Hutter to awaken the ancient evil. The whole origin of events feels threadlike and happenstance, perhaps to instill more mysterioso of the antediluvian universe on a smaller scale obsession story. Aesthetically, “Nosferatu” follows the Robert Eggers’ cinematography trend of blacks, grays, and a reduction to dull of primary colors for a gloomy period piece of cold weathered melancholy and bleakness under the continuous collaboration camerawork eye of Jarin Blaschke, marking their fourth feature together that implements inventive, complicated shots to sell practicality as fantasy in an early 19^th century European context. Blaschke’s aesthetic style would not have worked without the makeup and prosthetics for Count Orlok as a decrepit evil nobleman juxtaposed against the period costuming and elevated higher by the massive set designs of creating the Wisborg city as well as all of the other sets built to scale on acres of movie lot land.

Robert Eggers and “Nosferatu” is the match made in dark heaven to give that classical rebirth the kick in the Dracula cape it desperately needed for Universal. The at-home, Blu-ray release brings the darkness into living room television sets and other media players with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50. Eggers is also so fine and particular on detail, such as with all the production value listed above and the retro design company opening credits, “Nosferatu” is also presented in a European widescreen 1.66:1 aspect ratio used in antiquated times of the 60s to early 90s in Europe, to which this story is fictionally set. The Universal Films release houses both the theatrical version and extended cut at their respective runtimes of 132 minutes and 136 minutes, which is pretty incredible being both versions compressed onto one disc and, in the same breadth, had me concerned for artefacts in what’s surely a beautifully dark and tenebrous veneered Egger feature. However, low and behold, no signs of posterization or banding to speak of with a saturated void to keep the shadows menacing rather than murky or milky. The overall grading is quite dark with a deep bluish hue that enriches the time piece as well as the gothic tones. The unnatural density of color saturation leaves natural skin tones to sake of reality, but the details do emerge here and there when shadow play, mostly around the presence of Count Orlok, is abridged for quotidian life without the encroaching dread of supernatural omnipotence. Both formats are encoded with lossy audio mixes, a quite of a bit of them actually, with an English Dolby Atmos, Spanish Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, a French Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, and, lastly, an English Dolby Virtual Speaker (DVS) 2.0. The Dolby Atmos is tuned for a 7.1 configuration, emitting immersive and resonating sound to which “Nosferatu” laps up in luxury. The most notable aspect of the entire design goes, without question, to Skarsgård voice modulation for Count Orlock, a deep, guttural, European-accented assertion of all-encompassing faculty highlighted in every scene when, even more so when Orlock is not physically in frame. I like to think Robert Eggers is the Wes Anderson of horror when it comes to dialogue and entourage of ensemble casts and with dialogue range and depth that’s dynamic to flow with the ever-presence of physical change or to swell or diminish a moment. Dialogue is also stable, clear, and without dodgy interference, the spatial environment diffuses and disperses nicely through side, back, and even upper channels in Atmos and, the illusion provided, in DVS, and LFE finds a proper level without overwhelming cataclysmic plagues, fever dreams, or Orlok’s dreadful lust. Opted subtitles are available in English SDH, Spanish, and French. Bonus content includes a feature length parallel commentary with writer-director Robert Eggers, a lengthy behind-the-scenes featurette with interviews from cast and crew, and deleted scenes that can be seen in the extended cut. The Blu-ray, plus digital code, release comes with white-black and grayscale in between cardboard O-slip with the same Lily-Depp Rose’s face being caressed by Orlok’s sharp-nailed and decrepit hand image also as the cover art on the Amaray case. Inside, you’ll find the digital code stage right while the disc is pressed like most of all of Universal’s home video Blu’s with a near translucent quality to them. Theatrical cut is rated R for bloody/violent content, graphic nudity and some sexual content and the extended cut comes not rated. Though not listed anywhere on the cover or disc, the Blu-ray is encoded with region A playback only.

Last Rites: Robert Eggers shoots his shot working his dream story under a major Hollywood studio providing him with a major Hollywood sized budget. “Nosferatu” is every bit of Eggers, carved out and etched to the gothic and folkloric perfection that has quickly skyrocketed his brief career and the eclectic cast stuns in their own right with otherworldly and creepy performances that revives ole’ Count Orlok back to from the celluloid dead.

Experience “Nosferatu” in 4K UHD or Blu-ray. Purchase Here!

Colleen Collette and Colleen McKenzie are best friends. They’re also two superficial 15-year-old girls who are nose deep into their social media campaigning cell phones, jamming in their girl punk band Glamthrax, and living by the unorthodox, yet namaste driven, yoga practices while exasperatingly working at one of girl’s father’s convenient stores called “Eh-2-Zed.” Set in the Great White North of Canada, the Winnipeg, Manitoba sophomores are surprisingly invited to a senior party, a lure by a popular, good-looking senior boy who has a darker, Satanic side to him. The Colleen girls’ run in with a murderous devil worshipping senior inadvertently opens another hidden danger lurking 37 feet beneath their “Eh-2-Zed” soles. A slumbering Nazi mad scientists has been awoken and aims to finish his Third Reich master plan to take over Canada with a cloned army of Bratzis, living Bratwurst sausages who are pint-sizes Nazis, and seeks to unleash evil upon the Manitoba Earth.

Kevin Smith’s latest pop-cultural flick, a comedy-horror feature, entitled “Yoga Hosers” is the second installment, following 2014’s film “Tusk”, in Smith’s horror-inspired trilogy known as The True North Trilogy. Did you noticed I labeled “Yoga Hosers” as a comedy-horror instead of a horror-comedy? The “Mallrats” and “Clerks” director basks more in the familiarity of witty, profane humor in this second of three films, but Kevin Smith has known to dapple, gradually stepping over to the dark side into horror with his radical religious sect piece “Red State” and, like aforementioned, the body-horror “Tusk.” The Jersey native also has an occasional appearance on AMC’s “The Talking Dead,” a talk show about “The Walking Dead’s” post-premier of each episode, and has meddled in the realm of the fantastic. Not only is Smith a strong advocate and sincerely passionate comic book enthusiast, coinciding with his own AMC show “The Comic Book Men,” but “Dogma,” starring the late Alan Rickman, delivers divine revelations and, now, with “Yoga Hosers,” a villainous Nazi clones miniature Bratwurst soldiers. Smith holds, in my opinion, one of the most extremely diverse bodies of work in our lifetime.

Where as “Tusk” goes gritty and gory with R rated horror-comedy, Smith’s intentions for “Yoga Hosers” has always leaned toward that of PG-13 and, maybe, that’s due in part of the two films’ minoring connection. The connection, presumably set in the same whacked out alternate universe, stem from the two Colleens, one played by Smith’s hysterically funny daughter, Harley Quinn Smith, and the other being Harley’s longtime, kindergarden friend Lily-Rose Depp. Yes, the daughter of mega star Johnny Depp and French singer Vanessa Paradis brings her inherited talent and French dialect to one-half of a buddy comedy. The 15-year old girls, who are also 15-year old in character, transfer their natural offscreen relationship into being an entitled millennial pair with every intent on neglecting responsibility until faced with the moment of truth. Teamed up well with Lily-Rose’s father, Johnny Depp, under the heavy makeup of a fictional French manhunter named Guy Lapointe, also from “Tusk,” with scene-to-scene rotating facial mole, the crime fighting, buddy trio awkwardly moves across the plain in an enjoyable double entendre performance of simple wit. Accompanying Depp, Smith, and Depp are an eclectic roster of Kevin Smith’s usuals such as Justin Long (“Tusk,” “Jeepers Creepers”) as a reality-severed Yoga instructor named Yogi Bayer, Jason Mewes (“Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”) in a bit part, and, of course, Kevin Smith himself as the devilish Bratzis. New faces also make the scene with an unrecognizable Haley Joel Osment (“Sixth Sense”) as a young Canadian Nazi and “Orange is the New Black” Natasha Lyonne portraying a slutty Eh-2-Zed manager who sleeps her way to the top with Colleen C’s father, “Veep’s” Tony Hale.

“Yoga Hosers” explodes with Canadian farce that’s laced heavily with jokes on ‘aboots,’ hockey jersey-wearing patrons, an alternate version of Lucky Charms called Pucky Charms, and many more stereotypical references that satirically poke a good humored finger at Canadian culture and pop-culture. To top this satire sundae, the smug Colleens define the very title of the film with their dimwitted sludge and white girl yoga written into every storyboard moment. “Yoga Hosers'” buddy film concept gives an opportunity to two young and clueless teen girls who genre pirate the story with a jalopy of unsystematic plot humor, sucking away and discarding like garbage the sole ounce of blended “Gremlins” and “Puppet Master” cavalier subgenre horror that’s comfortably pleasant and inarguable right for a fun film of this triviality. Though I think the Colleens’ have had their story told, I’m intrigued to see what the pair of aloof teens offer in Smith’s third film of the trilogy, “Moose Jaws.”

MVDVisual distributes a dual format Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD release of the various production companies’, including main investor, Invincible Pictures, and Kevin Smith’s founded SModcast Pictures, “Yoga Hosers.” The Blu-ray disc is a MPEG-2 encoded 1080p transfer with a 2.38:1 presentation and, rarely, flutters under a mediocre bitrate. Image brightens with a glossy coating that revels in brighter hues of blue, pink, orange, and yellow while starker bolds such as red and purple pop with vividness. Yet, sharp details are thin, less defined to bring high definition to present technological age. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 track slightly elevates the ambient noise, especially during the girls’ punk rock practice that muffles out portions of their vocals, yet still manages to vary and balance. The only bonus feature available is a behind-the-scenes featurette that includes some insightful interviews. “Yoga Hosers” oppresses a melancholy reminder that the old Kevin Smith is no more and dawns a Kevin Smith 2.0 who transforms his satirical trademarks and his witty banter into strange misadventures, involving, in this case, two teenage fools flighting from one sub-narrative to another in a mixed bag of comedy and inferior minion horror.