He's chilled us to the bone with accursed goats (The Witch). He's chilled us to the bone with accursed lighthouses (The Lighthouse). And he's chilled us to the bone with blood-soaked tales of viking vengeance (The Northman). Now, after over 10 years trying to get his passion project made, modern horror master Robert Eggers is mere months away from unleashing his Nosferatu on the world. And following a slew of eerie posters and a terrifying, tone-setting teaser for his reimagining of the classic F.W. Murnau vampire chiller, the full trailer for Eggers' Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Willem Dafoe led Gothic horror is here. Check it out below:
It may be cold outside right now, but things just got a whole lot chillier in the office after that — sheesh! As was the way in Murnau's German expressionist masterwork and Werner Herzog's 1979 classic after it, here we once again find a haunted young woman — this time Depp's Ellen — become the subject of vampire Count Orlok's (Skarsgård) catastrophic infatuation. And with its icy cold palette, exquisitely recreated Victorian period setting, and oppressive atmosphere of creeping dread, all ever-coiling tension and none of modern horror's swift release, this looks to be a traditional Gothic horror through and through made with the same exacting attention to detail as Eggers' past works. What's more, as teased here in disconcerting glimpses between all the nightmares, vampyrs, and scurrying rats, it looks like Eggers is serrating his take on the Dracula riffing tale by introducing a more pronounced psychosexual edge to Ellen and husband Thomas' (Hoult) fraught relationship than in past adaptations. Suffice it to say, consider both heebies and jeebies duly given here.
When Empire spoke to Eggers last year whilst the filmmaker was still shooting Nosferatu, the director confidently asserted that his latest is, and we quote, "a scary film." And on present evidence, Eggers' long-gestating yarn of brooding bloodsuckers, spooked spouses, and resident evil — whose impressive ensemble also includes among its ranks Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, and Ralph Ineson — looks pretty bloody scary indeed. We'll be pouring out salt circles, filling our flasks with holy water, and eating exclusively garlic-based snacks when we head to the cinemas for Nosferatu, which hits US shores on Christmas Day before arriving via ship and coffin in UK multiplexes on New Year's Day.