#ellock

I found that the whole movie was lacking emotional weight tbh

Uhhh, so I kind of disagree with this assessment.

Firstly, I don't think LRD was particularly amazing in Nosferatu but, to me, her acting choices conveyed the push-pull, I just think they were subtle or quick. I've spoken about this before but when she talks about marrying death, when she talks about exchanging vows and embracing death, she smiles

she starts to cry when she talks about how everyone else is dead

but she smiles again when she talks about how she's never been happier than with death

and when she cries in Thomas' arms, it's because those feelings of joy are a betrayal to him and to the people around her.

And Thomas, as much as he loves her, is dismissive of her, which I think gets lost a lot in the discourse, he tells her to never speak of what she'd just detailed again, and she tries to explain that what she saw is doom for them because she'd never been happier with death.

Again, when she's talking about that feeling of destiny, she smiles

when she rebukes Orlok

she's also swayed to him

when she says "I abhor you" she leans in for a kiss, people, for various reasons, are just interpreting this as not what she really wants and not that this is what she really wants, she's just repressing it because she loves Thomas.

I honestly think what's happening, which again, I've said before, is how people are looking at Orlok. Even you writing "she was into it for a while" that doesn't register for me because Orlok isn't really a character to me, he's more theme than being/human, he is more representative of desire, of shame wrapped up in desire, of wants that haunt, of wants one can't adequately communicate, more than simply being desire and appetite, he is The Sublime and Ellen, for as much as she loves Thomas, is drawn to it [the Sublime]/him [Orlock] so it's more like she wants to want it to stop, it would be easier if it stopped, she would be "normal" if it stopped, but she's never been happier than in his/death's embrace, which is why it ends with her in his embrace.