Robert Eggers' Nosferatu has to be one of the least likely "Christmas movies" ever. Released on December 25, it's even set in the holiday season, but you may agree that this stunning remake of F.W. Murnau's silent horror classic is more suited to the bleakness of January. Since the movie's release, online discourse has come thick and fast, with some viewers shocked to learn that Nosferatu is a "rip-off of Dracula." Indeed, Murnau's 1922 version was an unauthorized adaptation of the 1897 novel, and Bram Stoker's widow took legal action that nearly led to the destruction of all prints of the foundational expressionist film. Today, the various versions of Nosferatu stand as evidence that no story is too familiar when you tell it in a bold, new style. The deal In 1838 Germany, real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is eager to get a promotion so he can provide for his wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp). Little does he know that his ethereal new bride forged an otherworldly bond in her youth with a creature of darkness. Thomas' employer, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), sends him on a lengthy errand to Transylvania to finalize the sale of an estate in their city to the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). When Thomas arrives, the villagers warn him frantically away from the Count's castle, but being a go-getter with no access to Google Translate, he persists. Meanwhile, back at home, Herr Knock is arrested for disturbing behavior, and Ellen begins having seizures that even her staid 19th-century doctor (Ralph Ineson) finds hard to dismiss as hysteria. He calls on the help of an old friend, Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe), a controversial Swiss scholar who believes in the spirit world. But Orlok is a go-getter, too, and his plans to relocate to Ellen's seemingly safe home city are already in motion. Will you like it? Eggers has been obsessed with the original Nosferatu since his teens, he told IndieWire in 2016, and even directed a high school play based on Murnau's film. In that interview, soon after the success of his first feature, The Witch, Eggers said it felt "ugly and blasphemous and egomaniacal and disgusting" for him to take on the classic so early in his career. But eight years later (after The Lighthouse and The Northman), the filmmaker's love for the original and for the Victorian vampire mythos…