After a steady trickle of on-set imagery and handful of divisive early audience reactions, the first official teaser trailer for acclaimed director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu has finally arrived.
The dark auteur behind The Lighthouse and The Northman appears to have lived up to his reputation. At least based on the near-two-minute preview that gives very little away about the film’s narrative thrust; even if the broad strokes are sure to follow in the shadow of F.W. Murnau’s “unauthorised and unofficial” adaptation of Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel.
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Instead, this Nosferatu trailer focuses on building an atmosphere thick with Gothic imagery and a steadily ratcheting feeling of dread: complete with rats, screaming twin children, angry villagers, a range of bleak Eastern European locales (shot in the Czech Republic), and the titular creature himself.
Credited as Count Orlok (similar to the original 1922 silent film of the same name), the latest iteration of Nosferatu has been portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. Having broken into film with his infamously unsettling portrayal of the demon clown Pennywise, Skarsgård noted that the task of tackling cinema’s most iconic vampiric presence “was like conjuring pure evil.”
Focus Features, who are handling the film’s US distribution, describe the premise as a “gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her.”
Lily-Rose Depp has replaced Anya Taylor-Joy as Ellen Hutter — the woman in question — and can be seen in the trailer alongside Nicholas Hoult, who has been tapped for Ellen’s muttonchop-sporting husband Thomas Hutter.
Audiences also get a better look at Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, who (in a novel twist) is brought to life by character actor Willem Dafoe. For context, Dafoe previously portrayed Nosferatu in the independent film Shadow of the Vampire.
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The core cast are joined by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin as Friedrich and Anna Harding, respectively; longtime Eggers collaborator Ralph Ineson as Dr Wilhelm Sievers; and Simon McBurney as the Renfield-esque vampire lackey Herr Knock.
As per the chilling Christmas 2024 coda, Nosferatu is set to hit screens on December 25th towards the close of this year — watch the teaser trailer above.
