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Robert Eggers on Nosferatu: ‘Hopefully it’s beautiful and repulsive’

Nosferatu may seem like a strange, sinister period-drama aimed at weirdoes who wished The Lighthouse had more blood-sucking sex and blood-sucking violence, but it’s a big-budget blockbuster being launched into multiplexes on Christmas Day in America and New Year’s Day in the UK. I’m speaking to Eggers in a hotel room the morning after a glitzy London premiere attended by a starry cast comprising Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bill Skarsgård, Ralph Ineson, and Simon McBurney. Still, when audiences flock to theatres, it’ll be due to Eggers’ involvement, not the vampiric IP. By sticking to his distinct, uncommercial visions, Eggers has become a distinct, commercial prospect.

The tale of Nosferatu dates back to Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, which served as the inspiration for FW Murnau’s 1922 silent movie Nosferatu. Eggers’s adaptation of Murnau’s landmark in expressionistic cinema places more emphasis on how society can shame female sexuality. “It’s there in the Murnau film, but it’s super-heightened in my version by making it about Ellen,” says Eggers. “Lily immediately brought up [Alejandro] Jodorowsky and saw parallels with my interpretation.”

Really, Nosferatu is a love triangle, just with an undead monster instead of Hugh Grant. As if possessed by an otherworldly power, Ellen Hutter (Depp) suffers from traumatic nightmares and wakes up to her indifferent husband, Thomas Hutter (Hoult). More concerned with his career than his wife’s sleepwalking, Thomas is a solicitor who ventures to Transylvania to secure a signature from a mysterious figure by the name of Count Orlok. So mysterious, in fact, Skarsgård’s depiction of the iconic vampire has been hidden from marketing, even if he’s the figure haunting Ellen’s dreams and, quite possibly, her unfulfilled sexual cravings.

“I was trying to find out how, and why, to tell this story my way,” says Eggers. “I realised that if Ellen was the central protagonist, the film would be more emotionally complex. I wrote a novella to further understand her character. It’s a poorly written thing, but it was very helpful.”

Eggers acknowledges that “film dorks” may find themselves overawed by Craig Lathrop’s extravagant production design, Linda Muir’s gloomy but stylish costumes, and Jarin Blaschke’s careful cinematography that captures moonlight with a spooky luminescence. However, he hopes audiences will also be immersed in the emotions. “A big inspiration was Wuthering Heights – the novel, not any film version – where Heathcliff really is a bastard. Does he love Cathy? Or is he obsessed with her, and he needs to own her, possess her, and destroy her?”

Eggers’s dialogue is rich, rhythmic, and as true to the period as a mainstream movie will allow. Orlok even speaks in Dacian, a dead Balkan language. Whereas the period linguistics are exaggerated for humour in The Lighthouse, Nosferatu takes its central story deadly seriously, just with some comic relief from side characters: McBurney and Dafoe have so much fun as, respectively, Herr Knock and an occult specialist that it’s as infectious as the plague unleashed by Orlok.

“Robert Pattinson on The Lighthouse did a lot of weird behaviour to get into strange states. I learned from Pattinson: I encouraged Nick to shove his fingers down his throat, and gag himself, and spin around in circles until he was dizzy, just to get out of his head and be actually disoriented” – Robert Eggers

Hoult, here, resembles his recent turn in Juror #2 as an everyman who silently and slowly realises that he’s a key pawn in a terrifying scenario. As Thomas, the actor is often white with fright, the life drained from his body, even before Orlok takes a bite. You can hopefully forget Hoult’s role in Renfield, a deeply unfunny comedy from 2023 in which he co-stars with Nicolas Cage’s Dracula. “I didn’t see Renfield, so I don’t know how that adds to the experience of watching this,” says Eggers. “No offence to Nick. This movie has a lot of the tropes we know, but I’m trying to do it earnestly, and to make it suspenseful and scary. I’m endeavouring for it to be my most approachable film.”

For a film to be approachable it needs movie stars, and Depp proves to be such a mesmeric performer that the film could be renamed Ellen. By working with a Japanese Butoh coach, Depp performs acrobatic possession scenes that are, ultimately, more frightening than what Orlok is hiding beneath his cloak. “Lily knew she needed to go completely fucking crazy, and go as far as she could go, and leave no trace of self-consciousness,” says Eggers. “It was challenging because it was so specific. Once we figured it out, it was matter of just doing it.”

With Hoult, a different method was required. “Nick worried about giving the right performance and being scared enough. At times he’d over-intellectualise what was going on because he cared so much about being the character. It got in his head. Robert Pattinson on The Lighthouse did a lot of weird behaviour to get into strange states. I learned from Pattinson: I encouraged Nick to shove his fingers down his throat, and gag himself, and spin around in circles until he was dizzy, just to get out of his head and be actually disoriented. Once we did a bit of that, he no longer needed it. He was like, ‘OK, this is what we’re doing here.’”

After four films, Eggers has garnered a passionate following and a subreddit in which users propose what his next project should be. “I certainly don’t go on [my] Reddit,” he says. “I can’t not be aware of my persona for those who know who I am. I am what I am. It’s OK.” As for his next project, he’s secretive over whether it’s a similar resuscitation of past projects like The Knight or Rasputin. “We’ll see,” he says. “Maybe it’ll be whatever else is on that Reddit”.

At this point, Eggers commands a great deal of creative control, but it’s not like he was ever a pushover. Days before The Lighthouse went into production, Eggers was asked by financiers to shoot it in widescreen; the director refused, and it came out in a boxy 1.19:1 aspect ratio. “Focus Features gave me an incredible amount of freedom and support,” says Eggers. “The only real issue that made studio executives nervous was that aside from Hutter leaving town and riding off into the hills, and the end with the sunrise, I wasn’t going to shoot in anything but overcast conditions in day exteriors. You’re there with hundreds of extras, and you’re not rolling because I’m waiting for cloud cover.” But it’s clearly worth it? “It is, and they know that. But time is money.”

Nosferatu is so beautiful that even the scenes with hundreds of rats carry their own poetry. I admit to Eggers that I’ve seen countless Werner Herzog movies, but not his 1979 Murnau remake titled Nosferatu the Vampyre due to my phobia of rats. Somehow, Eggers makes the unwatchable watchable. “That’s a nice goal when you’re making a movie. There’s some stuff in my film that is, you know, pretty blatant necrophilia.” He laughs. “Hopefully I’ve made it beautiful and repulsive.”

Nosferatu is out in UK cinemas on 1 January 2025.

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