Focus Features/Universal Pictures

Perhaps even more undying than a vampire living in snowy the Carpathian Mountains is the never-ending discourse about inappropriate age-gap relationships. 

A common refrain of late: that the younger people involved in these relationships are being taken advantage of, that these relationships are inherently problematic. Even when both people involved are above the age of consent, the younger person is often infantilized and the older of the pair is deemed predatory. Examining and questioning relational power dynamics is part of the legacy of the MeToo movement.

Ushering us into 2025, however, we’ve seen a new, somewhat bleak cohort: age-gap relationships that seem to simply destroy the romance’s elder. Not unlike the vampire in Nosferatu, the older people in Queer and Babygirl are down bad. The three movies all explore the idea of desire, especially for youth, being tethered to humiliation. Even if they’re centuries older than the objects of their desire, these mature partners don’t hold the power. It’s an inversion of the recent discourse — and a return to an earlier stereotype.

Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu is about so many things, but perhaps most urgently this: never tell an old, ugly man you are interested in him because he’ll never leave you alone.

The arduous, debilitating affair between melancholic 1830s waif Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and her vampire lover-enemy Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, under tons of prosthetics) begins with deception. 

Before the main events of the film, when she was ostensibly underage, Ellen calls out for “a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort” in order to be less alone. Answering her message is Orlok, a 16th Century Transylvanian nobleman-turned-vampire who appears to her in silhouette.He seduces her and makes her swear a vow to him.

Several years later, Ellen has moved on from the one night when Orlok catfished her. Unfortunately for her, the mustachioed undead Transylvanian hasn’t. When he learns that she’s happily married to a real estate agent, Orlok plans to immigrate to Ellen and Thomas’s new home of Wisburg, Germany to physically consummate the promise she made to him years ago. 

Eggers is purposely ambiguous when it comes to Ellen and Orlok’s connection. We know there’s pleasure and pain, obliterating violation and welcoming desire, but it’s impossible to separate all these parts from one another. 

This isn’t to say Orlok isn’t evil, but that his evilness does not exclude him from being pitiful.

He spends the entire movie stalking Ellen to make good on her vow. He engages in paperwork, sorcery, and immigration, all for one pre-teen girl he met on the astral plane. Can you say obsessed? 

For all of his dark power, Orlok is not in command when it comes to Ellen. His obsession with Ellen’s consent, with her admission that she wants him as bad as he does, is his doom. Ellen realizes that in order to rid herself of Orlok and save Wisburg, she needs to make him believe she desires him in the way he desires her. As the sun vaporizes him, he shrivels and liquefies happily, still believing she wants this as badly as he does. 

Pathetic Count Orlok isn’t that different from Daniel Craig’s Lee in Queer. In the film adaptation of William S. Burroughs's novel, Lee desperately chases the icy Allerton (played by Drew Starkey) in and out of the gay nooks and crannies of 1950s Mexico City. Lee’s day doesn’t start until he’s seen the younger man and doesn’t end until he’s said goodnight. Lee can’t even enjoy the time they spend together because he’s so worried about when they’ll see each other next. 

In an attempt to solidify whatever they may have, Lee invites Allerton for a trip to South America on his dime. He begs for the opportunity to throw money at their relationship, only to be shunned and teased throughout their journey. Under Luca Gaudagnino’s direction, that desperate, earnest yearning doesn’t ever come across as sympathetic — the way it might in a conventional romantic story. 

Queer requires a little suspension of disbelief. Craig is handsome and is (along with everyone else) beautifully styled. How pathetic could a beautiful man in a beautiful movie really be? But Lee’s meant to be seen as someone that resembles the way we used to think about single, down bad, older men before we dubbed so many of them “daddy” and the others problematic. If you squint, you can see the tracings of a man in mid-life crisis trying, desperately, to woo and buy affection from a much younger girlfriend or boyfriend who may or may not actively partake in a little gold-digging. The more he’s taken for a ride, the more harmless he becomes. 

It’s a figure we’ve seen in some form from literature like Lolita, to films like Some Like It Hot and Best in Show, to the contemporaneous cultural understanding of the late Anna Nicole Smith’s marriage. 

Starkey’s Allerton is cut from the same opaque cloth as another young lover from this winter’s film season: Harris Dickinson as Samuel in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl.  All we know about Samuel is that he works as an intern in modern day New York City for Tensile, an Amazon-like tech conglomerate, under Nicole Kidman’s Romy, its shivery CEO. 

With so much of her life in check, Romy thirsts for chaos. Samuel’s subordinate position maximizes that. He comes to represent both relief and danger — an escape from the responsibilities of Romy’s girlboss existence and the threat to her money, family, and career if he ever tells Tensile about their relationship. 

At the end of the film, Romy learns what  she got out of their relationship — a moment of self discovery about her own unspoken desires and repression. And we’re left with maybe our own small revelation: Perhaps being embarrassing is one of the wrinkles an age-gap romance can never totally get rid of.

Dan Brouillette/Bloomberg

Factory farming forever: Vox recently got a question from a reader about why factory farming — a system with precious few upsides — won’t die. We have the answer here.

LA fires continue: One thing that’s made the Southern California fires so unusual — and serious — is their proximity to urban life. Here’s a breakdown of just how and why wildfires can come to threaten cities — and what urban planners can do to minimize risks.

Another Fox lawsuit: Several Fox Sports employees, including an executive, face allegations of sexual harassment, racism, and other misconduct in a new lawsuit brought by a former employee. 

Trump's tariffs: The President-elect has made clear he wants to enact tariffs upon entering office. The issue is his proposals would cause severe economic damage. Is he bluffing, or does he want to bring about maximum chaos?

Kids and screen time: Are screens as bad for children as is generally asserted? It’s a good question, and Anna North has the answer. (Would you believe it’s a little bit more complicated than some might have you think? Shocking, we know.)

No more millennial money woes: Here’s a fascinating piece all about the rise of millennials. Turns out when you look at the data, the generation isn’t doing as badly as advertised. Who knew! [Business Insider]

Tibetan erasure: In a story sadly reminiscent of Native American residential schools here in North America, as many as 75 percent of Tibetan children are reportedly being forced to attend boarding schools by the Chinese government, where their language and culture are stripped away. [The New York Times]

 Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

That’s a preliminary estimate of the cost of damage from the Palisades Fire, just one of several fires burning in LA this week. As Jake Bittle explains for Grist, this “will test insurers’ commitment to a market that has been teetering on the verge of collapse for the better part of a decade now.” You can read more about the insurance crisis on Vox, as part of our collaboration with Climate Desk.

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by editors Sean Collins and Meredith Haggerty, with contributions from editorial director Julia Rubin. We'll see you tomorrow!

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