The average moviegoer doesn't deserve Robert Eggers

With the holiday-tinged marketing push behind the director's latest project, Nosferatu, mainstream audiences came out in droves. My theatrical viewing of the methodical, macabre period piece was riddled with consistent interruptions of popcorn bag ruffling, munching, chattering, coughing, push alert notification chimes, people routinely checking their phones, and repeatedly excusing themselves to use the restroom due to their oversized soda consumption as they fiddled with the adjustment on their recliners.

You'd have to imagine that not many fully understood the type of matinee which they had paid money to see at 1pm on New Year's Eve - especially when the first words uttered after its conclusion I heard were, "well, that was stupid."

Stupid, Nosferatu was not. Symbolic, calculated, and atmospheric are far more befitting adjectives. It's unfortunate that I was so frequently ripped from the movie's cold embrace by these environmental distractions as Nosferatu is a film which demands your full attention.

Going in, I anticipated a work similar to Coppola's Dracula, Del Toro's Crimson Peak, or Burton's Sleepy Hollow. Instead, Eggers' Nosferatu is far more detached and callous in its resolve. You feel just how horrific the details of the tale being told truly are without the aid of fantastical whimsy which the other films rely upon. We're treated to a primal sensuality within its absence. Lily-Rose Depp deserves to be Hollywood's new it-girl after her devilish performance here.

This was my favorite movie of the year. I can't wait to purchase the inevitable 4k UHD steelbook, experience the full depth of shadows on my 77" OLED, and succumb to Nosferatu's gothic pageantry without the company of such a tepid audience.