Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

F.W. Murnau’s seminal 1922 horror work, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, is often regarded as the original progenitor of the horror genre and to which all that follows owe a debt. Its release was shocking, unexpected, original and lauded, and it has left an indelible imprint on cinematic history ever since. One young man who fell under its spell was filmmaker Robert Eggers, who ever since childhood as long held it as one of his greatest influences, and now, after more than a decade of work, he finally brings his interpretation of this classic vampire mythos to the big screen. And the result is his magnum opus work. So much thought, feeling, and concentration of Eggers as an artist has been placed into this production, and you feel his presence and original voice in every frame. Inspired by the original tale, Eggers’ Nosferatu is no mere remake but his own interpretation of the story, and he takes an original view of the subject matter and its characters that feel right for his own interpretation.

Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gothic fairytale, dripping in romance and horror, and its chilling and ghostly ambience washes over the audience and hypnotises them to this frightening story of a cursed love affair. Every part of this picture, from narrative to performance, artistry and score, is fed from Eggers’s complete vision for this dark story, and the result will wrestle with all of your emotions, and the shadows of this picture will cover you entirely. In choosing three words to describe Nosferatu, I would use Gothic, Authenticity and Madness. While Nosferatu is a film of pure horror, its presentation and deeper narrative play out as a true gothic fairytale, and the focus on trauma and unrequited love add to the horrors that Eggers brings to the screen. The director’s fascination with the past and his total focus on period-correct detail of both the past and the supernatural is felt in everything, and this makes it a transformative experience for audiences. Eggers also conjures scenes of pure, barking madness, and it’s these moments when the characters lose themselves to the evil that surrounds them where the scares truly come, and this gothic insanity is damn haunting to watch.

Nosferatu is driven in its narrative by the presence of Lily-Rose Depp as haunted ingenue Ellen Hutter and her commitment to a whipped-up frenzy of hysteria, anguish and frenzy in a performance that rockets from A to Z in an instant. Depp has been a rising star in recent years, but until now, no filmmaker has tapped the well of talent that she can pull from, and she totally loses herself in the role of this cursed young woman. The object and desire of a sinister, unearthly evil, Depp’s Ellen Hutter, is pulled deeper and deeper under the spell of a demonic entity, and she desperately tries to claw her way back to the light. Pain and turmoil, as well as her fractured spirit, all play a part in Depp’s performance, and her presence as the seemingly perfect fiance is soon shattered as a growing darkness shapes around her. Delving into manic fits of hysteria, her possession is one of crazed physical performance, and audiences will be transfixed on her portrayal of a heroine who must make the ultimate sacrifice.

Cast opposite Depp and the object of her love in the mortal world is young estate lawyer Thomas Hutter, who is brought to the screen in a truly terrorized performance by Nicholas Hoult. Hoult begins as the perfect upper-class gentleman, a man of promise with a bright future ahead of him who soon becomes a pawn in a dark and dangerous game of evil seduction and is put through a meat grinder of physical, mental and spiritual anguish and pain. Becoming the toyed plaything of a dark entity, Hoult’s Hutter is dispatched to be used by this satanic presence, which leaves Hoult as a bruised, emaciated wreck, and when he sees his beloved fall under the creature’s spell, his horror only intensifies. Hoult brings out Hutters’ mortal humanity against this growing evil, and he shares a tremendous chemistry with Depp that is cut to ribbons as the curse and plague around them build. One particularly powerful scene between the two of them at the height of Ellen’s possession will send shivers down your spine, and Hoult does a tremendous job as the horrified and hazed Hutter.

A key level of support for the film’s narrative appears in the form of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin and Willem Dafoe, and all three leave their mark on the picture. As an enterprising businessman and a sceptic of the devilish happenings about him Taylor-Johnson’s Friedrich Harding is a bull of man, but his commanding presence is soon dashed as he tries everything to tear this growing nightmare from himself. Emma Corrin is particularly exposed as Harding’s wife, Anna, who becomes a way for the undead presence of the story to torment the waifish Ellen further, and she pays the ultimate price as an example of his evil. Finally celebrated performance, Willem Dafoe brings a frenzied derangement in his presence as occultist academic turned vampire hunter Albin Eberhart Von Franz, and he’s utterly wild in his presence and performance.

But one cannot whisper of Robert Eggers Nosferatu without mentioning the beast himself, the devilish form of the undead, the Vampyre, Count Orlock, who is played as evil incarnate by Bill Skarsgard. And his mere presence will send a shiver of fear down your spine. Orlock has long brought fear to cinemagoers for more than a hundred years, and he is radically re-imagined as a folk Vampyre by Eggers’s mind, and his undead presence will scare the living hell out of audiences. Skarsgard is a performer of deep intensity, and it’s almost as if he went to hell and back in order to embody the pure evil of Orlock. Transformed from the living to the dead, with incredible make-up, and lowering his voice a full octave with a guttural, gnashing vocal tone, Skarsgard falls into the sheer ferocity of Orlock’s imposing presence and the audience will feel the chill of fear when he is fully unleashed upon them.

As a cinematic experience, Nosferatu is a true work of art, and Robert Eggers hand guides all of it from afar. Leaning on the trappings of gothic romance, and looking to ideas of Romanticism and the works of Caspar David Friedrich for inspiration in bringing his Nosferatu to life, Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke have captured the film with an incredible monochromatic palette of blacks, whites, navy, greys and sepias that harken back to Murnau’s original presentation, but also hold to expression of the clash of the individual and nature as seen through the film’s Romantic expression.

Every frame is a work of flawless art. The attention to detail and presence of imagery captured in shards of cascading natural light or the flicker of candles adds to the ambience and expression of this picture. It thus makes your emotions rise further. Mixed with the stunning camera work and artistry of the picture is the evocative score of composer Robin Carolin, and with his eerie, ghostly sound, a tension and fright builds about the picture that will scare the living hell of you as the plague and presence of Count Orlock grows ever closer to Ellen.

Nosferatu is a masterful and haunting portrayal of gothic horror, showcasing a filmmaker at the height of his craft. Robert Eggers vision for the ultimate gothic vampire film has been brilliantly realized. The darkness envelops the audience, fully immersing them in a unique and powerful depiction of the vampire’s true essence, unlike anything seen before.

Image: Universal Pictures

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Autuer horror filmmaker Robert Eggers takes audiences into the very abyss of darkness with his long-awaited passion project, Nosferatu, an adaptation of the seminal 1922 horror film F. W. Murnau Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. The new trailer is utterly chilling to the bone.

Watch the all-new trailer for Nosferatu here:

Here’s the official synopsis:

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

Building off of the initial fright that audiences witness in the teaser trailer, this official trailer places audiences inside an 19th century Gothic nightmare as the young and beautiful ingenue Ellen Hutter (Lily Rose-Depp) falls under the guise if a devilish evil.. and all suffer in its wake.

The official trailer pulls audiences deeper into the ambience, texture, and dread that Eggers conjures in Nosferatu, and you feel the pull of a sinister force that will consume everything in its path. Its dark and gothic beats are certain to leave your skin crawling, and it’s clear that Eggers has produced a picture that could again follow in F. W. Murnau’s 1922 original and could very well be one of the defining horror films of a new generation.

Sight unseen un the trailer is Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok. And he is literally evil incarnate. Eggers and his team are saving the reveal of Orlock, and all we get is the shadow and whisper of this character whom Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas Hutter describes as ‘the devil’, and who has an infatuation and lust for his new wife Ellen, that will lead to madness, plague and death. Every step of the way you feel Orlock’s unnatural desire to consume Ellen and all she loves dear, and its these actions that leave audiences with a definite chill running down their spines.

 

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Nosferatu is undoubtedly one of our most anticipated films of the year, and we cannot wait to see the pure horror Eggers unleash when the film arrives in cinemas on January 18, 2025.

Image: Universal Pictures

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Watch the brand new first trailer for Nosferatu below:

Here’s the official synopsis:

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

Writer/director Robert Eggers is a true craftsman at heart, and his films impact viewers with their attention to detail, meticulous ambience and thrilling sense of narrative and character. Eggers brings that same sense of gravitas to his new look Nosferatu, which is a new adaptation of the classic horror piece, Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens, by director F. W. Murnau and screenwriter Henrik Galeen, and which now stands as a classic example of German expressionistic cinema. And after 102 years, the horror returns!

This first-look trailer offers audiences an atmospheric and intense piece of filmmaking that will fill them with dread and promise lashings of blood. Eggers has commented that he wants to produce a film that is a straight-up ‘gothic horror’, and this new work looks utterly terrifying in its construction. Nosferatu has long served as Eggers’ passion project, and you can sense that he’s crafting a film where the focus is to scare the living hell out of audiences.

To bring Nosferatu out of the shadows, Eggers has assembled an incredible cast of actors, including Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin and Willem Dafoe, and all of them are at the top of their game with their performances in this picture. Lily-Rose Depp is flawlessly cast as Ellen Hutter, an innocent who falls under the dark spell of a demonic force, and you can feel her sense of fairness intensely in this first footage. Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas Hutter is a man possessed, and you can see his desperate sanity failing as he tries to make sense of the horrors around him. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin make a great pairing of Friedrich and Anna Harding and will add a good dose of vigour to the production. At the same time, Willem Dafoe Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz appears as a dangerous vampire hunting force. You can sense the obsession and, dare I say, a touch of madness as he strives to eradicate the dark force he has encountered.

As yet unseen but already channelling a terrifying presence of pure evil is Bill Skarsgård, who brings to life the iconic presence of Count Orlock, cinema’s original horror monster, and while he’s yet to be clearly seen, his devilish spectre is deeply felt in this trailer. Eggers has heaped significant praise upon Skarsgård’s performance here as Orlock, calling his performance ‘transformative’ and commenting on Skarsgård’s performance, saying, “‘What would a dead Transylvanian nobleman actually look like for real?’ Bill lost a tremendous amount of weight. He’s so transformed in every aspect that I don’t know if people will give him the credit,” said Eggers. “You can see Bill [as Pennywise] in the It make-up; you can’t detect any Bill here. He worked with an opera coach to lower his voice an octave. I think people are going to think we treated it digitally, but that’s his performance.”

This first trailer for Nosferatu is just a tease of the horror that is to come. With its stalking terror, it will surely scare the living hell out of audiences when it arrives in cinemas this Christmas.

Image: Universal Pictures

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In two brand new featurettes ‘Warriors Of Steel’ and ‘Becoming a Viking’, audiences get a first-hand glimpse of just what went into the making of Eggers’ new epic The Northman, and this is a film that did not stray from the mud, blood and steel of the Viking age in its construction.

Showcasing the extensive costuming, production design and weapon handling and stunt training that went into The Northman, audiences get a real ground-level look into Eggers’ extensive attention to detail and the painstaking process that was followed to bring the Dark Ages up onto the big screen.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Starring Alexander Skarsgard as Viking prince Amleth, who following the murder of his father, King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) at the hands of his evil uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang), Amleth sets out to revenge his father and take his kingdom no matter the cost.

The Northman is a bold and brutal epic that is set to take audiences by storm and it’s one you’ll want to be ready for when it arrives in cinemas on may 12.

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Watch the brand new trailer for The Northman below:

Here’s the official synopsis:

Starring Alexander Skarsgard as Viking prince Amleth, who following the murder of his father, King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) at the hands of his evil uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang), Amleth sets out to revenge his father and take his kingdom no matter the cost.

Constructed in a montage style that delivers no specific narrative plot points, but instead paints a picture of what the film’s tone and energy will be about, and it’s raw and savage in its presentation.

Director Robert Eggers has turned back the clock to the time of the Dark Ages and he’s ready to take his audience for a wild ride as Alexander Skarsgard’s Amelth, a forgotten prince turned berserker wages a personal war upon the man who murdered his father and who is ready to unleash hell on earth to gain his vengeance.

The scale and ferocity of The Northman can be evidently seen in this new trailer and the action ramps up quickly, and this trailer is promising a film experience that must be seen up on the big screen.

Ready yourself for a savage rush of adrenaline when The Northman arrives in cinemas on May 19.

Image: Universal Pictures

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