Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” Sinks Its Teeth Into CinemaCon

This year’s CinemaCon has had its share of massive movies fronted by huge stars, including a full screening of the riotous, nonstop fun of the Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt-led The Fall Guy to the reveal of the first trailer for Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga’s Joker: Folie à Deux and the first film in the two-part Wicked, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Yet a film flying just a little bit under the radar created a reaction as big as any so far this week, with director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu dropping a teaser that jolted audiences in Las Vegas.

The teaser for Eggers’ film, which is an appropriately gothic story of obsession between the titular vampire and the haunted young woman he’s fixated on, opens on Ellen Hunter (Lily-Rose Depp) praying for someone—or something—to visit her. A voiceover then finds Ellen asking Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) if evil is an entity that comes from within a person or if it finds its way inside. Then things get insane. Ghoulish images, including an army of rats and a man sinking his teeth into a pigeon’s neck, are followed by the revelation of Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) beholding the castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) for the first time. Then Nosferatu makes his grand entrance (it’s Count Orlok), standing in the shadows with a dog at his side.

Eggers is perhaps the perfect person to do a deep gothic adaptation of the deathless story first created by Bram Stoker in “Dracula,” plunging audiences into the grim and gripping environs of 19th-century Germany. The film is focused on Count Orlok’s obsession with Ellen Hutter, and considering Eggers’ attention to detail in films as striking as The Northman, The Lighthouse,  and The Witch, it’s a safe bet that Nosferatu will feel as if we are right there in that cold and shadowy world.

Nosferatu is set to rise on December 25.

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Featured image: Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen Hutter in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC