Nosferatu is quite easily the most highly anticipated horror movie heading our way in 2024. Today, a new trailer has been released (via FearHQ.com) which suggests this filmmaker Robert Eggers will deliver the most spine-chilling, terrifying Christmas in recent memory.
Once again stopping short of fully revealing Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok, the focus is primarily on the twisted relationship between the vampire and Lily-Rose Depp's Ellen Hutter.
The atmospheric and creepy preview also features a lot of blood and it's clear Nosferatu won't be for the faint of heart. Superman star Nicholas Hoult also gets a fair bit of screentime, while it looks like we're in store for another compelling Willem Dafoe performance.
When Eggers released The Witch way back in 2016, he put himself on the map as someone who can use horror to truly terrify audiences. He'd follow that movie with The Lighthouse and The Northman but is making a full-blown horror return with Nosferatu.
"It took its toll," Skarsgård previously said of the role. "It was like conjuring pure evil. It took a while for me to shake off the demon that had been conjured inside of me."
Eggers added, "I remember early on, him trying to talk to me about what it meant to be a dead sorcerer - and I’m into some pretty heavy occult shit, but he was on a different level. I was like, 'This sounds accurate, but I don’t know how to converse about this with any fluidity.'"
Skarsgård, no stranger to horror after starring in IT and The Crow later admitted that he doesn't think people will realise it's him and calls Count Orlok "gross" despite this iteration of the monster being "very sexualized."
"It’s playing with a sexual fetish about the power of the monster and what that appeal has to you," the actor continued. "Hopefully you’ll get a little bit attracted by it and disgusted by your attraction at the same time."
To that, Eggers said, "Somewhere in that second makeup test, I was like, 'He’s become the character.' It was eerie to see in the footage. Anything he did, anywhere he turned or looked, you were like, 'He’s got it.'"
A remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 version and Werner Herzog's take in 1979, 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.
Written for the screen and directed by Robert Eggers, Nosferatu stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and Willem Dafoe.
Nosferatu will be released on Christmas Day.