Willem Dafoe, “crazy vampire hunter”

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Dafoe channeling a bit of Lon Chaney in LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT here? All I want for Christmas is next Christmas so I can finally see this film (Eggers’s NOSFERATU, though I would totally camp out for the midnight premiere of WILLEM DAFOE, CRAZY VAMPIRE HUNTER):

Eggers’s NOSFERATU - first image

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Definitely nails the feel of Murnau’s original. Love that, according to Eggers, “It’s even more Ellen’s story than previous versions.” Can’t wait for this.

Rather than a mere sprinkling of horror inflections, Eggers is confident in what his Nosferatu sets out to do. “Yeah, it’s a scary film. It’s a horror movie. It’s a Gothic horror movie,” he tells Empire in the 2024 Preview issue, featuring the world-first look at the film. “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.” It won’t just be viewers experiencing pure terror – as seen above, Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen Hutter, the wife of Nicholas Hoult’s estate agent Thomas, will be petrified by the power of the bloodthirsty Count Orlok. “It’s even more Ellen’s story than previous versions,” teases Eggers. “And Lily-Rose is absolutely phenomenal.”

THE VVITCH (Eggers, 2015)

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(Written and directed by Robert Eggers; starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Skrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson. Released 27 January 2015; watched thu/2023019 via HBO Max.

Last of the Eggers trifecta and, were it not for my adoration of THE LIGHTHOUSE, it would certainly be my favorite of his oeuvre. Far more conventional in composition (the stark, natural lighting was particularly potent) and in structure than the LIGHTHOUSE feverdream and, to a less-feverish extent, THE NORTHMAN (which I wish I liked more than I do). Worth noting that, as amazing as Anya Taylor-Joy was in one of her first roles, all of the cast, particularly Harvey Skrimshaw as Caleb and Kate Dickie as Katherine, deserve plaudits. Profoundly disturbing in horrors of the physical and horrors of the fundamentalist Puritan zeal and, yet, as I remarked to a friend (and edited here to make it sound better) I’m deeply moved by how the pure artistry of Eggers et. al made THE VVITCH’s horrors so compelling.