Radiohead X Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror takes the 1922 classic which is a blatant Dracula rip off and mixes it with two Radiohead albums (KID A and Amnesiac). This intrigued me because of the idea of taking something from 100 years ago and mixing it with music not related to it in any way.
As for the story itself, I enjoyed it. I saw it for the first time a couple of years ago and I don't know if it was because it was on the big screen or it was because of the music but I thought the story was just as good as ever. I think that this film’s version of Nosferatu is iconic and works for this film but I prefer the 2025 Robert Eggers version. The film did try and inject some colour into the film with weird bits of red and blue in an attempt to emphasise the evil???
The choice of using Radiohead didn’t work for me. It felt like they pressed play on their Radiohead Spotify playlist and left the film running. The songs didn’t have any connection to what was going on and there would be a gap between songs and yet things would still be happening. I think that you could probably use Radiohead’s back catalogue and put them together to fit better with the pace of the film. Also I don’t know if it was the cinema I was in but the volume was way too loud and it felt like my ears were going to start bleeding. To be fair my cinema is probably nearly 40 years old so it does need a major upgrade.
Overall I thought that this experiment didn’t quite work but I am glad that I went to see it on the big screen. It did make me think that you could give this film to Alexandre Desplat or Michael Giacchino or someone else to produce a more appropriate score for this film. I suppose the Robin Carolan score for the Robert Eggers version is the closest we will probably ever get. There is supposedly a R.E.M X Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr coming out in 2026 and I want to see that to see if this experiment has any future or whether we need to put this sort of thing to bed.
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