After being shown at Cinema Con and playing before The Bikeriders this past weekend, the highly anticipated trailer for Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu finally arrives online. The remake looks to be one of the most anticipated films of the year. Unsurprisingly the trailer looks really creepy.
Not much is seen in the trailer of Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlock but his character casts a long shadow, much like the long shadowy hand that’s seen in it. There’s a lot of Lily Rose-Deep pleading to someone. Simon McBuney pulls an Ozzy Osborne with a pigeon! When a deadly serious Willem Dafoe says the title, there’s chills.
For anyone who’s slept in a coffin for the last hundred years, the original Nosferratu is a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula directed by F.W. Murnau. Almost sued out of existence, the film thankfully survived and remains a horror classic. The visual of Count Orlock, played by Max Schreck with a bald head and rat like teeth, continues to be one of the all time great monsters in cinema history. The film also holds a special place in vampire lore as the first time a vampire is depicted being killed by sunlight.
It’s been remade before by Werner Herzog with Klaus Kinski in the title role, which itself is one of the all time great film remakes. Additionally, Willem Dafoe starred as Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire, a fictional telling of the making of Nosferatu. This film is a passion project for Eggers. He originally intended this as his follow up to The Witch. The wait looks worth it though. Every scene is shot with Eggers’ meticulous attention to period detail and ability to illicit dread. This film looks like it could be one for the ages.
Nosferatu arrives in theaters on December 25th from Focus Features.
