Nicholas Hoult Double Feature: "Juror No. 2" and "Nosferatu"
Two new films showcase Hoult's remarkable versatility as an actor, showing how he is as comfortable in a contemporary legal drama as he is in a Gothic horror tale.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the films follow.
For this week’s Matinee Monday I’m doing a little bit of a Nicholas Hoult double feature. The British actor is certainly having a very good run of high-profile projects recently, with both Juror No. 2 and Nosferatu doing well with critics, and in the latter’s case, accruing some good box office. That being the case, it makes sense to take a look at these two feature films and how they showcase Hoult’s talents.
Let’s start with Juror No. 2. This was one of those films that I was genuinely looking forward to seeing. While I might have more than a few issues with Clint Eastwood’s politics, there’s no question that he’s both a tremendous actor and a very competent director. I enjoyed Juror No. 2 well enough, but in general I found it frustrating.
The plot is deceptively simple. Nicholas Hoult’s Justin Kemp is a recovering alcoholic and writer who is working to build a family with his heavily-pregnant wife, Ally (Zoey Deutch). His life is suddenly turned upside down when he is summoned for jury duty for the trial of Gabriel Basso’s James Michael Sythe, who is accused of having murdered his ex-girlfriend. Toni Collette portrays Faith Killebrew, an ADA with eyes on the big job and who wants to see Sythe put away, while Chris Messina portrays Eric Resnick, the beleaguered public defender taking on Sythe’s case. The twist? Kemp was driving on the stretch of road where Sythe’s girlfriend was killed and, to make matters worse, he remembers hitting something that night. Though he assumed it was a deer, he realizes it may have been the victim, and the majority of the film focuses on his crisis of conscience.
While some elements of Juror No. 2 work quite well–most notably the performances and its grappling with thorny moral questions–its flaws are significant enough that they often overwhelm its better parts. To begin with, it’s a tad too long. There’s nothing wrong with a legal drama going on for almost two hours, but the key is that it has to be worth that rather bloated runtime. This film isn’t, particularly in the second half, which is devoted to the jurors and their incessant see-sawing as to whether Sythe is guilty (enabled by Kemp, who’s increasingly desperate to save a man he knows may very well be innocent while also protecting himself and his nascent family).
It certainly doesn’t help that, aside from Kemp, Killebrew and, to a lesser degree, Resnick and Harold Chicowski (an underused JK Simmons), none of the other characters, including and especially the jurors, are painted with anything other than the broadest brushes. To put it bluntly, they’re basically just archetypes with names and vaguely-defined personalities slapped over them. They act and speak as the plot demands, rather than as if they’re fully-developed characters with inner lives and personalities and motivations. I’m not saying that every single character in a given film has to be given a full backstory, but it becomes very tedious when secondary characters are basically just talking points that the protagonist has to engage with again and again.
Indeed, Juror No. 2 is a frustrating film precisely because so many things happen simply because the plot needs them to, rather than because they make sense. Take, for example, the moment when Killebrew, increasingly convinced that something isn’t right with the investigation, visits Kemp’s wife to ask her about the work done on her car after an accident. Since Kemp and his wife have different last names, Killebrew doesn’t immediately put the pieces together. While it’s entirely plausible that Killebrew would somehow manage to miss the photos of Kemp that are scattered throughout his house, which would give the game away, this whole scene really does put its toe on the line of believability. I am not exaggerating when I say that I rolled my eyes at this little bit of flagrant obviousness and shoddy screenwriting.
Where this film does succeed, however, is in its two lead performances. Hoult has always struck me as a remarkably talented and versatile actor, with his china-doll beauty and slightly pouty mouth lending themselves to men out of their depth. This is certainly true in Juror No. 2 and, while may sometimes find his actions morally reprehensible, such is the strength of Hoult’s performance that we almost find ourselves cheering for him anyway. Collette is likewise in her element as an ambitious, steely, but deeply human prosecutor, even though her Southern accent is a bit iffy. Messina is also excellent as a well-meaning but ineffectual public defender.
Likewise, Juror No. 2 does ask some very potent and very troubling philosophical/moral questions. Given the ambiguity of Kemp’s memory, is he right to not come forward, particularly since doing so would almost certainly result in his own conviction, given his past as an alcoholic? Isn’t his own family’s well-being important, too? Complicating the equation is the ambiguity of Kemp’s own recollection. Because so much of our perspective on events is limited by his own fractured and unreliable memories, we can never quite say for sure whether he did or didn’t hit the victim. Perhaps there’s reasonable doubt here, and perhaps not. When, at the end, Killebrew shows up at Kemp’s doorstep, her cold gaze suggesting in no uncertain terms that she’s decided to pursue true justice for the wrong that was done, it’s difficult to know whether to feel whether this is a good or a bad thing. Thus is the power of moral ambiguity.
Ultimately, Juror No. 2 is a compelling but deeply frustrating piece of cinema. I found myself constantly imagining what a more coherent version of this film might look like and, while I’m not generally in the habit of holding up movies and comparing them to some idealized version in my own head, I do think that this film could have been better with a more disciplined and coherent screenplay. Alas, this is what we got.
Nosferatu is, on the whole, a much more satisfying film than Juror No. 2. While I’ve had mixed experiences with Eggers’ films–I loved The Witch but found The Northman to be a campy mess which, I daresay, was not exactly his intention. I therefore went into this one with lower expectations than I might have otherwise, prepared to be either wowed or underwhelmed.
Having seen it, I can honestly say that it’s the former (much to my relief). Indeed, Nosferatu, in keeping with the sinister powers of its titular antagonist, is the kind of film that worms its way inside your mind and refuses to leave, holding you in thrall long past the moment when you leave the theater. Grotesque and gloomy and viscerally terrifying, this is the sort of atmospheric horror at which Eggers excels.
As one might expect, the film follows essentially the same plot as both F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film and the countless other interpretations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that have emerged over the years. Hoult stars as Thomas Hutter who is dispatched by his boss, Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) to the castle of the reclusive Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), who plans to move to the town of Wisborg, Germany. However, the Count has other plans and, thanks in part to an earlier encounter with Thomas’s wife Ellen (Lily Rose-Depp), he plans to take possession of her for his very own. The only thing standing in his way is Thomas, well-meaning Doctor Wilhelm Sievers (Eggers stalwart Ralph Ineson), and Willem Defoe’s Wilhelm Sievers, a strange, disheveled philosopher with an interest in the occult.
As he did with The Witch, Eggers plunges us into a world that’s very different from our own, one that is believably haunted by the unknown and the eldritch. This is true even within the seemingly more civilized realm of Wisborg, given that Herr Knock has himself been mentally enslaved by Orlok, leading him to engage in all sorts of depraved behavior (up to and including biting the head off of a pigeon).
This is even more true of the Carpathian wilderness to which Thomas is dispatched. This is a world of wary villagers and their strange occult rituals, of eagle-haunted crags and wolves howling in the night. Orlok’s echoing, drafty castle is the perfect lair for this cadaverous creature, and once he appears the film, and its characters, are never the same. The further that Thomas stumbles into this being’s embrace, the more lost he becomes, stumbling through the halls of this labyrinth like a tormented Theseus until, left behind by Orlok as the latter begins his fateful journey to Thomas’ home and his wife, he plunges from the castle into the river below.
Hoult is perfectly cast as Thomas. From the moment that he arrives in Transylvania it’s clear that he’s in way over his head, his very proper and contained modern masculinity under constant threat in this world of madness and monsters and superstition. You can’t help but be sorry for the man, even as you want to shake him and make him realize that he’s fallen into a vampire’s trap.
It should come as no surprise, though, that this is very much Orlok’s movie, and what a terrifying creature he is. Bill Skarsgård has repeatedly shown a remarkable ability to transform into creatures sprung out of the darkest depths of human nightmare, and he’s done it again with Count Orlok. This rendition of the character is pure, visceral, earthy horror, with his desiccated Boyar-like visage and his decaying, flaccid body. Yet there’s also something sensual about this character too, and even his deep, throaty voice–which one reviewer noted made it sound as if he’s been gargling with rotten meat–has an appeal to it. It feels like it’s worming its way into the base of your skull, or perhaps into an even more intimate part of your anatomy. Strange and unsettling as it may seem, it’s actually easy to understand why Ellen would find him so alluring and repulsive at the same time.
Nicholas Hoult and Lily Rose-Depp offer a fascinating duality as the central heterosexual couple whose union, and city, are so endangered and corrupted by Orlok’s arrival. Just as Hoult’s Thomas is a paragon of a certain kind of delicate modern masculinity, Rose-Depp Rose-Depp has the sort of wan, frail look one expects of a Victorian maiden who is the perfect receptacle for an undead demon’s insatiable appetites. Rose-Depp gives a literally embodied performance, twisting and contorting her body as Orlok comes to increasingly dominate her psyche. Yet there’s a strength to her, too, and this is no shrinking violet.
It’s thus fitting that it’s Ellen who ultimately plays the key role in bringing about Count Orlok’s demise. Given the extent to which almost everyone else in the film has either underestimated her or attempted to repress her with the mechanisms of science–even the kindly and well-meaning Doctor Sievers doses her with ether and straps her to the bed–it’s quite exciting to see her take ownership of her own body at last, offering it up to Orlok to devour as Thomas and the others befoul his nest, ensuring he cannot return to rest. There is strength in the female body, Nosferatu suggests, such strength that it can root out evil and the plague.
This film is everything you could want from a twisted Gothic horror tale, with some visuals that are haunting and beautiful in equal measure, such as the moment when Orlok devours the two young children of Ellen’s friend Anna Harding (a criminally underused Emma Corrin) or when he finally meets his demise in the sun, with blood spurting from his decayed mouth and cadaverous eyes. Horror is almost always about desires and bodies in one way or another, and Nosferatu engages with both.
We’re all the luckier for it.
Both Juror No. 2 and Nosferatu, in their different ways, demonstrate Hoult’s remarkable powers and versatility as an actor. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us in the future.