One of horror’s biggest icons is coming back this Christmas.
Three months after audiences got their first look, the trailer for Robert Eggers’s reboot of Nosferatu is here. The movie, based on the 1922 film of the same name, is a retelling of the story of Dracula. The original film, one of the most acclaimed early horror movies, was nearly destroyed because it infringed on Dracula’s copyright, but a few copies were saved, and it was eventually made available to the public again. It was previously remade by Werner Herzog in 1979. The new Nosferatu stars Nicolas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Simon McBurney, and Ralph Ineson.
As with prior versions of the story, Eggers’s long-awaited take will center on Ellen, a woman (played by Depp) who is being stalked by an obsessive vampire. You can see the full trailer here.
“It’s a scary film. It’s a horror movie. It’s a Gothic horror movie,” Eggers said back in November. “And I do think that there hasn’t been an old-school Gothic movie that’s actually scary in a while. And I think that the majority of audiences will find this one to be the case.”
He added, “It’s even more Ellen’s story than previous versions … And Lily-Rose is absolutely phenomenal.”
The trailer asks fans to “succumb to the darkness,” and focuses heavily on the influence that the vampire has over everyday people, with even Depp’s character falling prey to the effect. It seems there will be a subplot featuring X-Men and Superman star Nicholas Hoult as seemingly the only man left in this small town who isn’t in some way under the vampire’s influence. All along, the storytelling and cinematography features some trippy angles and no small amount of seductive sound design and imagery…but not like…Twilight seductive. This vampire doesn’t appear to be visually appealing.
They’re also going for a grounded realism, with Eggers saying in a previous interview that he felt like Skarsgård, who plays the vampire, looks and acts more like a centuries-old Transylvanian nobleman than other iterations of the story.
Per its official synopsis, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman in 19th century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.
Nosferatu will be in theaters on December 25th.
