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At the age of 41, director Robert Eggers is right at home by now living in the past. Eggers set his first feature, "The Witch" -- a film in which many people first laid eyes on Anya Taylor-Joy -- in New England in the 1630s. His second picture, "The Lighthouse," examined the cranky interactions of flame-tenders Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson on a bleak North Atlantic island in the 1890s. And his third movie, "The Northman," reached even further back, to the brutal Viking world of 895 CE. Now, with his new film, "Nosferatu," Eggers is delving into the history of movies themselves. His "Nosferatu" is a remake of the 1922 silent horror classic of pretty much the same name (the old one's subtitle is "A Symphony of Horror"), which was based on Bram Stoker's 1897 vampire novel "Dracula" and directed by the esteemed German filmmaker F.W. Murnau (a winner at the first Academy Awards for his still-admired 1927 film "Sunrise").

That original "Nosferatu" has had a wobbly transit over the course of the last 102 years; at one point it was nearly lost. Murnau made the picture without obtaining the permission of Stoker's estate; a lawsuit ensued and a court ruled that all copies of "Nosferatu" be destroyed. Fortunately, that wasn't quite done. Some copies of the film survived, and are now the basis -- with all permissions finally in order -- of Eggers' remake.

It's a beautiful piece of work, thick with cloaks and candles and color-drained gothic imagery. It's set in Germany in 1897, and hits all of the story's familiar beats. So we have the real estate agent Jonathan Harker (called Thomas Hutter here, and played by Nicholas Hoult) making his way to a castle in the Carpathian mountains owned by one Count Orlok (an unrecognizable Bill Skarsgard), for whom Hutter has found new digs, so to speak. And there's the scene where Hutter accidentally cuts himself and the very thirsty Orlok pretty much loses it -- salivating at the same time over a locket in which Hutter carries a portrait of his delectable wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who has no idea how much trouble she's suddenly in.

Some of the actors are already friends of the fang. Nicholas Hoult played Dracula's loyal stooge in the underappreciated "Renfield." And Dafoe, who portrays an occultish medico not unlike Professor Van Helsing in the 1931 "Dracula," was a hoot in the 2000 horror comedy "Shadow of the Vampire," a speculative reimagining of the making of the original "Nosferatu." (Dafoe played Max Schreck, the spooky actor who shaped the Nosferatu image, and when the movie's producer starts looking for a way to shrink the film's budget a bit, Dafoe's Schreck pipes right up: "I don't think we need the writer any longer.")

The movie has a predictable problem, of course. After decades of Universal and Hammer takes on the vampire life, there's not much left to be scared by. But the picture looks terrific, from the stormy seas and velvety snowfall to the herd of gypsies fooling around with their hoop drums and ouds and muttering in Romanian accents as thick as boiled oats. There are warnings about perfidious women ("Demons like them"), admonishments about overmedication ("No more ether!"), and of course quite a lot of fresh, warm blood and streets filled with corpses and rats (every last rodent real, the director would like you to know). It's all that's required, really.

'BABYGIRL'

Over the course of her 40-year career, Nicole Kidman has been both a golden-girl movie star and a fearless actor willing to attempt almost anything in support of a film: a naked bathtub scene with a 10-year-old boy in the 2004 "Birth"; getting down with a hyper-hairy Robert Downey Jr. in the 2006 "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus"; and, maybe most memorably, or at least unforgettably, actually peeing on Zac Efron in the 2012 Matthew McConaughey movie "The Paperboy."

Now comes "Babygirl," a twisty examination of the bondage and domination games sometimes attendant upon male-female relations. If this sounds like well-worn narrative ground, be assured that it's not. Crucially, the usual character roles are switched up here: The story, by Dutch writer/director Halina Reijn ("Bodies Bodies Bodies"), is an inquiry into the plush life of a 50-something woman named Romy (Kidman), a top executive at a New York robotics company (already we're getting a command-and-control vibe). Romy seems to have it all: an adoring husband (Antonio Banderas), two fairly perfect teenage daughters, and a country home to die for.

Then a disruptive character named Samuel (Harris Dickinson) arrives in Romy's life. She first sees him on the street outside her office building, talking down a yappy dog who's wandering leashlessly on the sidewalk. When Romy later asks how he managed to subdue the animal, Samuel says he gave it a cookie. When she asks if he always carries cookies with him, he answers, with a knowing smirk, "Why, do you want one?"

Harris throws Romy off her game, especially after he sneakily scores an intern job at her company. Soon he's turning up everywhere she goes, and before long they're having afternoon assignations at local hotels, where Harris tells Romy to get on her knees and remove her underwear -- the kind of thing that all women like to hear as soon as possible. Romy is shocked at first, but not for long. Although she's a tough nut in the business world, she's long had a desire to be dominated -- and who better to play that role than the hot young Samuel?

Normally, you might figure that these two characters are embarking on a "Story of O"-style S&M adventure. But then they find that the erotic rush that's sweeping them off is beginning to turn in an unanticipated direction. Romy begins easing into the master role with Samuel, and finding that she likes it.

In the role of Romy, Kidman gives one of her boldest performances, playing a seemingly strong woman who's discovered that, with the right sexual predator, she can actually be a very willing victim. And then, in a moment of clarity, that there's really no reason she should have to be.

Kidman negotiates the movie's occasional nude scenes with total confidence. (She may be 57 years old herself, but she's still Nicole Kidman, and when her character decides to get Botox injections at one point, we can only wonder WTF.)

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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