It is hard not to view the latest film by Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Northman) as intentionally correcting the perplexity Timothy Garton Ash writes about in his Stasi-haunted memoir, The File: “If only I had met, on this search, a single clearly evil person.” Being so understanding that one cannot understand so much as the possibility of evil is something common to moral relativists — unable, through lack of practice, to draw conclusions that would be obvious to a child. Faced with wickedness, we blink and make excuses, exchanging our outrage for highbrow rationalizations. To put a finer point on the matter, Nosferatu walking the earth today would likely be indulged.

A remake of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece, the auteur’s new picture carries similar themes of female sexuality and the Other even as it revises Henrik Galeen’s Dracula-inspired plot. Fans of complex interpretation, however, will be disappointed by the effort. Despite gesturing in metaphoric directions, Eggers’s film is remarkably straightforward. Nosferatu, an insatiable fiend played by Bill Skarsgård, lacks both kindness and mercy and merits only annihilation. Explanations will not do. The creature is evil, and evil must be named, sought out, and destroyed.