You couldn’t ask for a better filmmaker to bring the tale of Nosferatu to life than writer-director Robert Eggers. This man is the king of juggling dark tones with absurd humor and brings a uniquely dark tone to all of his work.
With Bill Skarsgard taking the lead as the titular character (actual name: Count Orlok), it’s hard to go wrong if his turn as Pennywise The Dancing Clown in the smash-hit adaptation of Stephen King’s It was any indication. What’s wild about this first teaser for Nosferatu, though, is that you don’t even get a clean look at Skarsgard. You just get this sense of foreboding by the mere silhouette he casts.
Skarsgard stands at 6-foot-4, which is intimidating enough. His incredible physicality as Pennywise makes me even more excited to see how he’ll embody this role. As for the trailer itself, we start with a straight-up terrified Lilly-Rose Depp who can apparently sense Count Orlok’s impending arrival.
There’s a rather blurred sense of reality at various points in this trailer from Depp’s point of view. Eggers is excellent at such sequences, evident in particular in The Lighthouse. Speaking of that booze-fueled stunner of a movie, Eggers reunites with Willem Dafoe for Nosferatu. Dafoe plays Albin Eberhart Von Franz, who appears to be an adaptation of Van Helsing given that he hunts vampires.
Here's our first look at Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, the "crazy vampire hunter" played by Willem Dafoe in Robert Eggers' forthcoming NOSFERATU remake! https://t.co/EynoJeVhZz
— FANGORIA (@FANGORIA) December 18, 2023
Adding to the coolness of Dafoe’s involvement, he actually scored an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Max Schreck in 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire. That film’s events were based on the production of the OG Nosferatu flick from 1922. Fun fact: Nicolas Cage was a producer on Shadow and initially wanted to play the part of Schreck. Not only did Dafoe crush it in his stead, but let’s be honest, there’s no way Nic could’ve topped his dracula-adjacent performance from Vampire’s Kiss.
Sorry if that’s a big distraction from Nosferatu. Trying to take the edge off a little bit. And what kind of Grinch decided to release this horror film on Christmas Day? That’s either the most brilliant strategy of all-time or a total miscalculation. Don’t families want to go to the theater on Christmas to see something a little more four-quadrant? LOL.
I’m kidding. I think Nosferatu is going to crush at the box office regardless. Getting such an original auteur like Eggers to sink his teeth into some iconic material seems like such a winning combination.
Rounding out the exceptional ensemble cast, too, are main Deadpool & Wolverine villain Emma Corin, new Lex Luthor Nicholas Hoult, and Fantastic Four antagonist Galactus, Ralph Ineson. Plus we’ve got Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whose Kraven the Hunter film releases on December 13. We’ll be seeing a lot of the actor who many are tapping to be the next James Bond.
This new incarnation of Nosferatu could be truly groundbreaking for the horror genre as we know it. Bring it on, I say. And I hope they save Skarsgard’s full visage for the actual movie rather than spoiling it in the next trailer.
