Robert Eggers on Directing ‘Nosferatu,’ One of the Year’s Most Anticipated Films

When Robert Eggers released his directorial debut, The Witch, in 2015, he arrived during a new era of Hollywood horror. Alongside a new generation of horror filmmakers, Eggers used the genre to explore deeper themes of grief, motherhood, and race.

Following The Witch’s critical acclaim, Eggers became one of the leading figures of the horror revival. He brought his unique vision of history and folklore to life with tense atmospheres that linger with the audience. For his next film, Eggers takes on his most ambitious project to date: Nosferatu, a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 classic horror and an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Against all odds, Eggers finally brings his unique vision of Nosferatu to life as he reimagines this iconic gothic tale of obsession.

You directed a Nosferatu play when you were 17 years old. How did it feel to return to the story?

It’s a story that is very important to me. Your first feature is a very special thing because it’s all this stuff that you’ve been thinking about films and what you can bring to a movie, and it all comes out. The Witch is certainly a very personal film for many reasons and part of that has to do with that energy of focus.

But this is similar. It’s a remake of a very famous movie, but it’s strangely just as personal to me as The Witch because it’s been with me for so long, both in the high school play that I co-directed and the various times that I tried to get it off the ground as a movie.

As a film, it’s been about 10 years trying to get this thing together. I’m glad it has taken a long time because I’m a better filmmaker and the movie wouldn’t be what it is without having more experience. Is it perfect? Nothing is. But it’s certainly a lot better than had I made it 10 years ago.

I was really impressed by Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter. What made it such a great physical performance?

I’m excited for people to see how raw, brave, and sophisticated her performance is. Everything she is doing physically is all real; nothing has been sped up or manipulated. That’s the work she did with the choreographer, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, to do all of that hysteria and possession stuff. I have not worked with an actor who is as easily emotionally available as Lily. She just goes there without a lot of effort.

How did you react when you saw Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok? It must be a dream to have an actor who will go to the darkest of places for your project.

It was the second full makeup and costume test that he just became the character. Everybody standing by the monitor immediately knew that Bill was not there. Because Bill is a similar age to the leads, I said to him, “I’m not asking you to be method because it’d be too much energy, as Orlok is a superhuman character that is perfect and can’t make mistakes. But in order for you to have authority over these actors that are your age, when you’re in the makeup, only talk to me and don’t talk to them.”

Occasionally, there were times when a little levity was needed, and Bill was able to accommodate that as well, but then immediately could snap back into this incredible darkness.

What makes the Gothic such an uninhibited space for filmmakers?

Gothic romanticism isn’t always successful but even if the movie isn’t great, the atmosphere is always appealing. There’s nowhere I would rather be than in a churchyard with a fog machine and Boris Karloff. For me, there is something all so cozy about it.

Beyond Gothic, horror is a genre where filmmakers get to have the safety to explore emotional extremes.

Do you think that’s why horror is in such a healthy place at the moment, as filmmakers are using the genre to explore these big themes?

We aren’t the first two people to discuss the horror renaissance that began a few years before The Witch and Hereditary. It has continued to flourish and hopefully, nobody gets sick of it anytime too soon.

You were previously working on The Knight, just like you did with Nosferatu, would you be interested in revisiting this project?

I would certainly love to make my medieval knight movie and maybe after [Nosferatu] would be the right time to do it. I don’t know. I have a bunch of scripts in various stages of finished and not finished and we will see. You always have to have a lot of things going on in this industry because you don’t know what is going to work.

When Nosferatu didn’t happen the second time, I was certain it was never going to happen. I was actually trying to make another movie, which no one wanted to make, so all of a sudden, I was like, “Maybe I can make Nosferatu now.” You just never know.

What is your driving creative force when choosing your next project. Do you focus on a specific time period or particular folklore?

It depends. The Lighthouse was the vaguest concept and an atmosphere. A lot of times it is the atmosphere that can be connected to the period.

It’s the boring answer but it depends. Anything could hook me and then I start amplifying my knowledge as much as I can in the spokes of the wheel.

That’s an interesting way of looking at it because so much can come from that wide-ranging research. For example, in Nosferatu, the idea of the occult isn’t something that’s explored heavily in Bram Stoker’s Dracula or the original Nosferatu but comes across perfectly here.

With this movie, one of my guiding principles was, “What were the original filmmaker’s intentions?” I’m not making the same movie as them, but what were they thinking about and what were they inspired by?

Albin Grau, the producer and production designer of Nosferatu, was a practising occultist and I think he believed that psychic vampires were real. He talks about folk vampires in press. That feels sensational, but I would be surprised if he didn’t believe in psychic vampires who could torment people in astral form. What was his thinking as an early 20th-century occultist? What would Von Franz [Van Helsing]’s occult views be like in the 1830s? What are the folk superstitions in Transylvania, and then how do I synthesize them into a cohesive mythos?

Photos courtesy of Aidan Monaghan / © 2024 Focus Features LLC.

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