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‘Sexual and gory’ horror remake dubbed ‘best of the year’-Tori Brazier, Rebecca Sayce and Brooke Ivey Johnson-Entertainment – Metro
A masterpiece.
A horror film UK audiences won’t see until 2025 could already be the best of the year (Picture: Courtesy of Focus Features)
Early reviews have promised Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake ‘goes harder than any other horror film’ – but the eagerly-anticipated 2025 horror film ‘daunted’ its creator.
Starring Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin and Willem Dafoe, Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, according to the official synopsis, which causes untold horror in its wake.
With performances dubbed ‘out of this world’ and a film described as ‘one of the most seductively macabre films ever made’, Nosferatu has also been called ‘a perfect remake’.
Robert Eggers’ anticipated take on the Dracula-inspired tale has also roundly been praised as not only the best horror film of the year but one of the best overall.
But Skarsgård, who is set to play the titular vampire, has shared how there were moments during production that he and director Eggers felt they were in over their heads.
‘Orlok is also Dracula. To me, in terms of iconic horror characters, the number one is Dracula/Nosferatu,’ he told Vanity Fair.
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‘It’s the most seminal work of literature in gothic horror for sure. I think it’s been adapted more than probably any other book. This story is so ingrained in our subconscious that it was very daunting to step into it.
‘I was a huge fan of [Robert] Eggers before. He and I would have these things we’re like, “What are we doing? Why are we doing Nosferatu? Are we taking on something too big here?”
‘We felt that kind of pressure of f*****g with a masterpiece. But the movie deserves its place as a new interpretation.’
Critics who have been able to see the first screenings for Nosferatu in the US, where it’s scheduled to come out on Christmas Day, promise terrifying things for British fans come January 1, the UK release date.
‘Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu goes HARDER than any other horror film this year. Holy f**k,’ wrote film critic Courtney Howard in awe, also calling it ‘a gorgeous grotesquerie of dread-infused terrors and a divine dark delight’.
‘Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok is pure sinister nightmare fuel. Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult’s best work to date.’
Next Best Picture’s Editor-in-Chief Matt Neglia also had praise for the acting as he noted ‘Lily-Rose Depp gives every ounce of her body and soul to this eye-popping performance of tormented possession’, while Skarsgård as vampire Count Orlok was ‘so utterly compelling every moment he’s on screen that his presence lingers even when he’s not’.
He also warned that the ‘breathtaking final shot sent chills through my body as I left the theatre’.
Nosferatu is a period horror film (Picture: Focus Features)
Lily-Rose Depp has been praised for giving a ‘career-best’ performance (Picture: Focus Features)
The star-studded cast has been assembled by filmmaker Robert Eggers (Picture: Focus Features)
Meanwhile, Griffin Schiller described Nosferatu as ‘a deeply chilling nightmare that lingers’.
‘If you love the horny fever dream of Coppola’s Dracula you’ll adore this,’ he added, while anointing it ‘easily one of the year’s best’.
‘Best horror film of the year’ proclaimed film critic Zayyan Farooqi in agreement, while @dancindanonfilm said that the movie ‘took my breath away’.
‘Nosferatu is a frightening fever dream. Robert Eggers’s camera movements are masterful as he pulls you into a relentlessly disturbing horror film,’ shared movie and TV critic Jonathan Sim, who also claimed that the period horror ‘improves upon the original’ with a performance by Skarsgård, ‘who manages to be even scarier and more unrecognisable than he was as Pennywise’.
It’s been reported that Depp will be submitted for Oscar consideration in the best actress category, while Skarsgård, Hoult and Dafoe will be classified as supporting actor.
The movie was initially set to star Anya Taylor-Joy and Harry Styles as Ellen and Thomas Hutter, the woman who becomes the obsession of a vampire and her husband who unwittingly signs away her soul.
Nosferatu was first made over a century ago in 1922 as a silent German Expressionist Dracula knock-off directed by FW Murnau and starring Max Schreck.
Schreck’s bald head, bat ears, peg-like teeth and clawed nails as vampire Count Orlok have become an iconic image in cinematic history, but Skarsgård’s transformation has so far been kept secret – much like the tease of Nicolas Cage’s appearance as the titular villain in Longlegs this summer.
Nosferatu was first released as a film in 1922 (Picture: Getty)
We have seen just shadows and a sinister, long-nailed hand in the trailer.
Director Eggers has made a name for himself in the horror/thriller-history space over the last decade with his feature films The Witch, The Lighthouse and Viking tale The Northman.
Nosferatu was remade previously by Werner Herzog as Nosferatu the Vampyre in 1979, starring Klaus Kinski.
E. Elias Merhige made Shadow of the Vampire in 2000, a fictionalised behind-the-scenes look at the making of Nosferatu with John Malkovich as filmmaker Murnau and Dafoe as Schreck.
Nosferatu will hit UK cinemas on January 1, 2025.
This article was originally published November 23 2024.
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