Ending Explained: Nosferatu: Eggers’ Glorious, Gothic Vampire Revival

💡 What does the ending really mean?

In the climax, Ellen unleashes her sexual power to summon and then destroy Count Orlok, allowing Thomas to stake him at sunrise; the vampire’s body crumbles to dust as Ellen dies in Thomas’s arms, their hearts stopping together. The ending is a bleak gothic triumph of eros over undeath, yet it offers no true victory: the curse of obsessive desire is simply passed on, and the final shot of a bat flying into the moldering shadows reveals that the cycle of carnal possession and spiritual corruption will never end.