It's not a perfect parallel, but when Greta Gerwig directed her remake of Little Women , I was conscious it was her evolution from just another indie director who points a camera at contemporary people talking (something Woody Allen forged decades ago and which has been emulated ever since) to a 'real' moviemaker who showed talent we'd never seen from her with set dressing, costuming, effects and the other filmmaking arts beyond just scripting and casting.

It's not a perfect parallel because Robert Eggers has always been a far more visual director and has shown more talent with the more artistic trappings of moviemaking than Gerwig did earlier in her career. But his reimagining of the 1922 (and 1979...and 2023...) classic marks his ascension into a much bigger league. It's so cinematic it feels like a blockbuster.

He doesn't reinvent the wheel with the story – it's still the tale liberally borrowed from Dracula (to the extent Bram Stoker's widow sued Murnau back in the day), where a Transylvanian count intends to buy a crumbling manor house in a more modern city and brings horror and biological corruption with him.

Up and coming real estate clerk Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), who lives and works in a small German town in the 19th century with his cute new wife Ellen (Lily Rose Depp), is dispatched by his employer to facilitate the deal at the castle home of the buyer, Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgård) in person. Ellen doesn't want to be without him for the six weeks the trip will take, but he's determined to go because it will set the young couple up for the future.

Little does he know his boss, Knock (Simon McBurney) is already Orlock's familiar, raving and eating vermin as his master commands him from across the ocean, and is setting Thomas up to be Orlock's first sacrifice.

Thomas' arrival and stay are a nightmarish hellscape where he's never sure which way is up, besieged by prolonged periods of disorientation and gripped by horror, seemingly attributable to the dark, moustached figure with the ghastly skin and voice as deep and rumbling as a thunderstorm, a man we only ever see enshrouded in shadow.

But there's already a connection with Orlock. After a traumatic experience as a child, Ellen has spent her entire life fighting off fugues states of delirium and night terror, sure something beyond the world is seeking her out. It's never very clear whether Orlock already knew Thomas was married to his longtime quarry or whether it was coincidence, but when he realises, it becomes his mission to return and claim her.

With Thomas MIA and her nightmares getting worse, Ellen only has her lifelong friend Anna (Emma Corrin), her husband Friedrich (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and their little girls to lean on. And all the while, Orlock draws closer.

The family doctor (Eggers regular Ralph Ineson), having some experience with Ellen's inexplicable condition, seeks out the help of the disgraced and eccentric but steadfast von Franz (Willem Dafoe), who knows exactly what they're dealing with, recruiting the doctor and Friedrich to rally around Ellen and battle the ultimate evil.

Eggers has all the visual bases covered, from the scope of long shots with invisible CGI to visual embellishments that highlight a castle with darkened corners or a town falling into the grip of what everything thinks is the Black Plague.

The repeated motif of the shadow of Orlock's hand falling across things is used to great effect, including in the most haunting and beautiful shot of the film – when it creeps slowly across the town at night, enshrouding everyone even further into darkness. Along with many other shots like it, it uses the crisp and chilly cinematography beautifully.

It also (no doubt at the behest of a cigar-chomping executive) has more of an emotional heart than any other Dracula-adjacent tale. I can't remember if Ellen's connection to Orlock and the obsessive love story was present in the original, but it's more overt here than you've ever seen.

It actually works both as something of a comment about how mentally unhealthy being madly in love can make you and in giving the film a more erotic charge, especially when lined up against the conservative mores of the period.

The make-up effects and voice Skarsgård puts on are also brilliant – in an age where sound quality is getting worse in movies I started to worry I'd miss half of what he said (it's 95 percent legible), and he's unrecognisable in the role.

For a nepo baby who's only claim to fame is Kevin Smith comedies, Depp also does a suitable job as the anguished lead – you can see her trying a bit too hard here and there but the odd awkward moment in her performance actually suits the milieu of the story it's in.

Eggers also never loses sight of what fans (including himself) loved about Murnau's original, and retaining the moods and tones almost a century later with the modern tools of the trade is quite a feat. It's moody (rather than outright scary), very visual, and even though I've admired his movies more than loved them until now, it's made me a fan.