Smash hit 2025 vampire movie has just been added to Netflix

It got rave reviews and was an unexpected blockbuster.

From writer-director Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Northman, The Witch), the film takes place in Wisborg, Germany, in 1838. Its story follows estate agent Thomas Hutter (a typically great Nicholas Hoult) and his new wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp).

Soon into their marriage, Thomas accepts a job from his employer (Simon McBurney) to travel to a remote castle in Transylvania's Carpathian Mountains. This is to sell a stately home in Wisborg to the reclusive, eccentric Count Orlok, aka Nosferatu (an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgård).

Though Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) warns him not to go, after experiencing dark and foreboding dreams, Hutter dismisses her concerns and sets off to meet Orlok, soon finding himself plagued by terrors.

While her husband is away, Ellen stays in Wisborg under the care of friends Anna and Friedrich (Emma Corrin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson), where her health starts to deteriorate rapidly.

Called to help, Dr Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson) and his old mentor and expert on the occult, Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe, having a blast), start to suspect that Ellen may have some strange connection to Nosferatu, whose name comes from an archaic Romanian word meaning "the offensive one".

How to watch Nosferatu right here:

Released in Irish and UK cinemas on New Year's Day 2025, JOE noted at the time that Eggers was the perfect Hollywood filmmaker to reinterpret this story.

After all, he is well known for his love of folklore and his obsession with rendering the past as beautifully but as authentically as possible onscreen, as evident in his previous films.

In our review of Nosferatu, we praised Eggers for finding new ways to compel viewers and send chills down their spines, even when working with quite familiar material.

We wrote: "Scenes play out like gothic paintings come to life. Big important choices, like the look of the at-first hidden-from-sight Nosferatu, break from tradition but feel right.

"In fact, the best parts of Eggers' Nosferatu are the tweaks he makes to the classic story. Making Ellen more of the lead character with this hidden mystery adds intrigue, while also amplifying some of the underlying themes of the source materials - women's role in society, repressed sexuality, class concerns, etc.

"It helps that Depp gives an absolutely star-making turn, managing to always have Ellen be a character you root for, even as she delivers several dread-inducing monologues and performs some incredibly terrifying acrobatics during her scenes of possession.

"Also brilliant is the addition of characters Anna and Friedrich, two ordinary, likeable people caught up in the horror who keep you glued to the screen in the hope that they and their family can somehow survive what's coming."

We also had one minor note of criticism, which was: "Because of how successful these changes on the fringes made by Eggers are, you almost wish he had been less faithful to what had come before in a broader sense.

"While the finale of the 2025 Nosferatu is a triumph of pacing, performance and staging, there is undeniably a feeling of inevitability that sets in for those who have seen either the Murnau or Herzog version of the story.

"That said, there is enough new and inventive in Eggers' take on the vampire classic that makes this still a must-see. And for those that aren't hugely familiar with Nosferatu or Dracula, you're in for a treat," we concluded.

The 2025 Nosferatu earned generally glowing reviews from critics, with the movie holding an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score. The film also grossed over $180 million at the box office on a reported budget of just $50 million.

With Eggers' follow-up Werwulf out in cinemas in a few weeks, what better time to catch up on or revisit Nosferatu?

How to watch Nosferatu

Nosferatu is streaming in Ireland and the UK on Netflix.

It's also available to watch in the US on Hulu.