TheNosferatudirector doesnt want to represent a modern point of view in his horror-adjacent movies.
Keeping pace with Hollywoods perpetual awards horserace.
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This interview was published on January 14, 2025.
On January 23,Nosferatuwas nominated for four Oscars.
Robert Eggers, the writer and director behind this yearsstunningly disgustingNosferatu, was raised among books and academia.
The Northmanwas a box-office dud but acquired a following regardless, likeThe Lighthousebefore it.
EggerssNosferatuis hyper-controlled, ominous, sometimes opaque, and graphically repulsive.
I thought it was the coolest thing Id ever seen.
I read the caption and wanted to watch the movie.
But it just had a believability to it, I think partially because the image was so degraded.
The VHS was made from a poor 16-mm.
There was no bald cap line on Max Shreck and no visible grease paint.
It felt like something that had been unearthed from the past.
And obviously, his movement, his performance, the makeup design, were all so iconic.
Its a night scene!But there is a kind of romance to that degraded VHS.
Pretty soon after I saw the originalNosferatu, the Francis Coppola movieBram Stokers Draculacame out.
Which, like yourNosferatu, is hugely influenced by aesthetics of silent cinema.The Coppola version was massive for me.
I watched it a million times.
It just felt grounded in a way, more so than any other vampire movie I had seen.
Gary Oldmans performance is pretty fantastic.
But well, it explains a lot!
Vampires are all about sex and death.
And its clear that I kind of realized that as a kid.
I was also very interested in witches, of course, but they were just scary, right?
Like, I never wanted to be a witch.
But being a vampire had some appeal.
There were, you know, good costumes!
I would personally rather play the devil than Jesus, because its more fun, right?
Another thing I found out watching every version of Dracula is that early vampires often didnt drink blood.
They were just as likely to smother their victims to death, or fornicate with them to death.
And when they did drink blood, it would often be from the chest.
If you think about it anatomically, breaking the breast bone is not very practical!
In addition, for this film, drinking heart blood had physical, poetical appeal.
The slurping was way crazier than I imagined, thanks to the sound-design team.
They took it further than I had expected.
Theyre reanimated, pale, putrid corpses that are also seductive.
I knew some people wouldnt like it.
I didnt know that the mustache would besocontroversial!
But theres no 17th-century Transylvanian nobleman that didnt have a mustache or a full beard, right?
The forelock is also something you might link with Ukrainian Cossacks.
It was a popular style for military warlords and aristocracy around Central and Eastern Europe in that period.
The mustache by itself seemed more appropriate than the beard, because it seemed more traditionally Baltic and Slavic.
And also, you know, Dracula has a mustache in the book!
Bill couldnt do it because of COVID, so that part ended up being played by Gustav Lind.
Then Bill wrote me a letter saying that he, like, really wanted to be inNosferatu.
I didnt respond to it because I didnt really know what to say or what to do.
Whose idea was the Nosferatu voice?It was mine.
In the script, which is probablyavailable to read online now, the voice is described very specifically.
That was something I thought about a lot: the breathing.
Then Bill started working on the voice.
Did you end up digitally enhancing the voice?We didnt.
Obviously its louder, right?
At times we push it into the subwoofers to give it as much body as possible.
But we didnt have to make it lower-pitched.
And I dont mean in a cliched sense, i.e., big emotions though it has those.
But, you know and maybe I didnt succeed!
Much more mannered, more artificial and rigid in how we would conduct ourselves in our everyday life.
I askedWillem Dafoeif the wordrealismhad any meaning to him as an actor, and he said no.
And if Willems character seems a bit eccentric, well,so does Slavoj Zizek!
If Zizek were a fictional character in a movie your first reaction might be to think hes unrealistic.
When its a good fit, it feels like doing theater in high school with my friends.
Hes so intelligent, and hes able to talk about things so clearly and lucidly and deeply.
One of the best performances Ive ever seen in my life was during press forThe Lighthouse.
He starts doing this [makes dancing, prancing marionette motions].
Willem starts becoming a mechanical wooden doll and doing this dance!
Like a mechanical wooden doll dancing to the sea shanty.
And thats one of the reasons why Willem Dafoe is so great.
He could easily have fallen into being a character actor with a voice and a shtick and a thing.
But he doesnt do that.
So I sent her some stuff to watch and some stuff to read.
But she really did most of the preparation on her own.
What was the audition?It was difficult.
I can just go on about Lilys performance forever.
Nicholas Hoults portrayal of fear is quite remarkable.It really is.
Nick saw the challenge in the role.
Thats not easy to to do.
Im hoping for it to be a nuanced ending that people can take different things away from.
I find that all of your movies are that way, to some extent.Thank you.
Im spending two months just talking about the movie, and its a weird dance.
Do you wish you could be Terrence Malick and not give interviews?Yeah, yeah.
I mean, in a perfect world.
But its not a perfect world, right?
So there is value in trying to sell your movie, or whatever.
But ultimately, as far as the end ofThe Witch, its real if you believe it is real.
And thats sort of the stance for the characters in my films.
Theyre thrown into the deep end of the pool.
Its because they know that theres no hope.
Lets talk about the power dynamics of gender as presented inNosferatu.
Again, to Willems point, nobody represents a 21st-century point of view.
There are no proto-suffragettes who fence.
Murnau and his collaborators had the sensitivity to make Ellen the heroine by the end of the film.
She sacrifices herself for the good of the city, and humanity, and succumbs to the vampire.
I think there is a sacrifice.
Hopefully theres nuance going on there, and its not just this or that.
Is Heathcliff really interested in Cathy, or does he want to possess and destroy her?
Youre drawn into that story, but it certainly is not a healthy relationship.
Do I need to address this?
One of the key questions in the movie is, does evil come from without or from within?
But I think the answer is both.
The modern mind rebels at the idea of evil being a disembodied force that can enter us.
Is one of your goals when you make a horror film to scare people, in the super-basic Boo!
There is real value in that.
Also, a jump scare can be satisfying, but it doesnt mean a lot.
The best part of it is the relief of tension in the audience.
But I think what really makes a movie scary is all the moments leading up to that.
Youre on edge the whole time, and concerned that anything is possible.
The feeling that anything is possible is part of what makes monsters scary.
