I have a question about the ending. The popular opinion is Ellen tricks Orlock, and ok the codex is his. But still she looks at the manor burning and knows he has no place to escape at dawn. It can also mean she's making sure he can't escape?
Yes, the codex is Orlok’s. He, like book Dracula, is a Solomonar, his sigil is on the cover of the codex, and, of course, he’s seeking to escape the Faustian bargain which caused him to become a vampire, as Bill Skarsgård said. I’ll repost the Romanian folklore around codex (“Solomonar book of wisdom”) when I get to that topic. Knock is not a Solomonar, like Von Franz very much says after finding the codex (“Our Nosferatu is of an especial malignancy. He is an arch-enchanter, Solomonari. Satan's own learned disciple”); The Professor knows the codex belongs to Count Orlok. But also to become a Solomonar one has to study at the Scholomance in the Carpathians. Which isn’t Knock’s case, and it’s also clear he’s a wannabe occultist who (unlike Von Franz and Orlok) has no idea what’s he’s doing, but that’s a topic for another time.
Ellen knows Orlok has no place to hide come dawn, correct. She sees the manor burning at a distance. I think folks still don’t understand what the “vampire hunters” plan was and that’s why we need the references to the “Dracula” novel for context. Their plan was to seize/destroy Orlok’s sarcophagus, yes, and drive a spike of cold iron through him, to destroy him (that’s the folk method to “exorcize” a vampire and sort of how Dracula is killed in the book).
But the film already tells us what happens to Orlok at dawn while Thomas is at his castle. Orlok is literally dead during the day and is only re-animated by Devil’s magic after sunset. He returns to his sarcophagus to stay dead in safety (sanctuary), otherwise he’s completely vulnerable to, yes, someone drive a spike of cold iron through him and he can’t do anything to stop it. That’s the vampire hunters’ plan: Orlok drops dead at dawn and Thomas stakes him. The Devil gets Orlok’s soul for eternity and he doesn’t escape his bargain: “Without you I’m to become a demon”.
But Ellen is breaking the curse of Nosferatu (as Lily-Rose Depp confirmed, although it’s clear in the film)… Orlok has on himself. She’s setting his soul, and hers, free (“freed them from the plague of Nosferatu”) because Orlok is a folk vampire, he feeds on life force/soul (“the blood is the life”), heart’s blood, and the heart is where the soul is believed to reside in several religions worldwide. That’s the point of her sacrifice. To liberate them, both, from the bodies and existences which oppresses them. It’s also an exorcism, in a way, but the Devil doesn’t get their souls; Zalmoxis does. Orlok finally enters Zalmoxis’ blessed kingdom, but Ellen is going with him.
