Three films in and Robert Eggers has a name for himself as an auteur of some rather carefully constructed and daring genre projects, including 2015’s “The Witch,” 2019’s “The Lighthouse” and 2022’s “The Northman”.
The films are grimy, gritty, often trippy, and are visually and auditorily both ambitious and eccentric. There’s go for broke performances, difficult filming conditions and a sinister tone lingering over everything. That includes his upcoming project, his long-in-the-works adaptation of F.W. Murnau’s iconic silent vampire feature “Nosferatu”.
The story revolves around the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard), a vampire who moves to a new land and becomes infatuated with a young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) who resembles his lost love. Her husband, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), gradually uncovers the horrifying truth about Orlok, he races against time to stop the creature.
In a new interview with Empire, Eggers explains that he’s hoping to see how far he could push himself and his abilities as a filmmaker:
“I’m trying to go beyond what I’m capable of. As always, it was a difficult shoot. Last night we were doing a scene on a ship with a lot of rain and waves, and the rain deflector, which tries to blow rain out of the lens, was breaking down and fogging.
I spent the past several days working only with Russian sailors on a boat. I’m so happy to have made The Northman first and to have learned what I learned. When I think about the production plan of Nosferatu that we had the first time around, I’m sure I would have somehow pulled it out of my butt, but it’s hard not to imagine it being a failure.”
Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Simon McBurney, Emma Corrin and Ralph Ineson also star in the project, which wrapped filming in May in Eastern Europe. The film doesn’t have a release date.
