Last Updated on November 13, 2024 by Angel Melanson
As the hype for Robert Eggers' Nosferatu ramps up, most of us are understandably desperate to know what Bill Skarsgård's take on the ancient bloodsucker will look like. After all, Focus Features has wisely opted for the Longlegs marketing route of hiding their monster from all advertising and trailers, but a new interview with the film's cast and crew teases that we're in for a nightmare like never before.
In a brand new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Eggers and some of Nosferatu‘s key cast including Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe and Nicholas Hoult revealed some behind the scenes details of the Gothic vampire horror ahead of its December 25 release date.
We've heard a lot about Skarsgård's exhaustive transformation into the iconic vampire, from his pungent aroma to his work with an opera singer to lower his voice by an entire octave. Hoult expands on hearing the It star's brand new voice for the first time:
“It was unlike anything I'd heard before […] It was chilling to me. Rob was playing it off of his phone, but it still filled the room.”
Eggers, who has garnered a reputation as a filmmaker who prioritizes slowburn horror (see: The Witch), also spoke about the importance of retaining the atmosphere from F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic, and his own personal opinions on jump scares:
“Doing Nosferatu, which sort of invented horror movies, I had a responsibility to do some jump scares, which is something that I’ve been at times critical of, but it felt like you got to do it here […] If my son drops a LEGO set, smashes it all over the floor, it makes a loud noise. I’m going to jump, but is that frightening? Is that what horror is about? No, but if the story is saying that the protagonist is leading up to something with tension that it shocks them [in ways] they weren’t expecting, and it’s earned because it’s part of the story, then I think that’s great.”
That's not to say Nosferatu isn't going to ladle on the traditional scares (just read some of the first reactions). Skarsgård talks about seeing the first “goblin”-like character conception via FX artist David White, and how it differs from his most famous monster role to date, that of Stephen King's iconic demon clown Pennywise (who is set to return in HBO's upcoming Welcome to Derry prequel series):
“I was terrified just looking at the image […] It looked so, so different from me, way more so than Pennywise. I was worried that I couldn't perform through it, that it would feel like giant prosthetic pieces, and I couldn't come alive through that.”
Take a read of the full EW interview for more behind-the-scenes tidbits while you wait to catch Nosferatu in theaters on Christmas Day.
