Robert Eggers' Nosferatu remake is visually stunning and admirably old fashioned in its staging and production values but despite staggeringly good casting it never really catches fire. Constrained by the original? By Bram Stoker? It's 15 rating (in the UK)? Either way it feels like every time the film threatens to take off, the pressure on the gas pedal gets lifted and the energy grinds to a halt. Given the cast - notably Nicholas Hoult in the leading role - that's slightly unforgivable, but it's an unexpected shift in style too for Eggers, after his delightful psychodrama The Lighthouse, that took risk after risk, yet here we have a leading man uniquely qualified for vampire movies and he doesn't really make an impact. Hoult tore the screen apart with Renfield - an original and sardonic take on vampire movies (with ties to Stoker's novel), and his experience in Skins, The Great and A Single Man have all shown off an unusually relaxed ability to investigate his characters' sexuality (very much a component of vampire films for many). Yet his Thomas Hutter here is an enigma - the ostensible hero without a personality, pretty but without a character. So little is asked of him it's hard to believe the same director coaxed such a dangerous performance out of Robert Pattinson just five years earlier. For Bill Skarsgard's Orlok to seduce him as well as his screen wife Lily-Rose Depp and leave Hoult barely noticeable is just bizarre. The ending of course is as predictable as the rain, for all its intensity offering no surprises or particular discomfort. That has something to do with Count Orlok playing the most tangential of physical roles in the production. His booming, surely digitally altered voice is occasionally hard to understand, and the decision to humanise his appearance feels downright odd. The production though is phenomenal, from the location shoots to the masterful lighting and the Czech sets - this looks out of this world, a period piece like few others. It just has next to no heart to it. The energy behind Renfield is nowhere to be found, the ghastliness of The Lighthouse is hinted at but never takes off, despite Willem Dafoe's relentless (and welcome) scenery chewing. It's a 2 hour watch that feels longer, it plays it safe when it needs real risks taken, and ultimately has a Hammer House of Horror quality to it - a cult aesthetic but lacking in the substance it deserves.