When Robert Eggers announced that his long-gestating passion project, Nosferatu, was finally in the works, it instantly became one of ’s most anticipated movies of 2024—and now it’s officially our highest-rated horror film of the year. A reimagining of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu (which is itself a reimagining of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula), Eggers’ gothic vision ups the ante with more rats, more blood and more emphasis on the classic story’s co-lead, Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp).
While Bill Skarsgård portrays the vampire Count Orlok, aka the titular Nosferatu, it’s Ellen who acts as the film’s beating heart. members are likening her highly athletic performance to that of Isabelle Adjani’s in Possession and in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979): “Never in my wildest dreams did I think there would be a worthy successor to Isabelle Adjani, but Lily-Rose (to my great surprise and delight), reprises the purest essence of her, and then some,” writes Rachel. “An emphatic, ‘good for her.’”
In addition to the influence of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror, we asked Depp and Eggers about the other movies and art forms they looked to for gothic guidance during production, as well as what it was like to collaborate with all those cat and rat actors.
