Robert Eggers, the director of the new film “Nosferatu,” says his inspiration for the movie started when he was a student at Mast Way Elementary School in Lee, New Hampshire. It was there that he first saw an image of Max Schrek as Count Orlok from the 1922 silent film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” on a book cover. This sparked his love for the horror genre.
“I thought it was the coolest thing ever. With the help of my mom, we went to the Fox Run Mall, which had the closest video store to Lee, and we had to order a VHS, which came in the mail about a month later,” Eggers said. “And that VHS was really inspiring.”
Eggers, 41, wrote and directed the latest “Nosferatu,” which stars Bill Skarsgård.
The project took a decade to make, with three previous attempts to film and produce it before it finally happened. Filming first started in 2015 but was stopped for various reasons. Eggers is happy “Nosferatu” came out when it did, on Christmas Day last month in U.S. theaters, as it shows his growth as a filmmaker and person.
Eggers gives a lot of credit for his success to mentors from his time growing up in New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. He went to Oyster River schools in Durham and naturally got into acting, inspired by his mother, Kelly, a dancer and actress who started the Oyster River Players theater company. In his senior year of high school, Eggers co-directed a play version of “Nosferatu” with his friend, Ashley Kelley Tata, now a theater and opera director in New York.
After putting on the high school production, they made a more professional version at the Edwin Booth Theater in Dover, which made Eggers even more sure he wanted to be a director. Eggers also gets inspiration from the late Hyman Bloom, a painter from Nashua. He said he had included one of Bloom’s drawings in his “look book” for a future film project, but he did not give details.
Childhood inspiration leads to filmmaking journey
Eggers’ version of “Nosferatu” follows the original 1922 film’s story closely, with a few modern changes. Set in the 1830s, it is about a newlywed couple, Ellen and Thomas Hutter, played by Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning.
The story is about Thomas traveling to the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to sell real estate to the scary Count Orlok, played by Skarsgård. Unlike the silent original, this version has talking, with Count Orlok speaking Dacian, an old regional language. One big change is that Eggers made the ship’s journey bringing plague to Wisburg, Germany more exciting.
While the original screenplay by Henrik Galeen showed a “dead schooner” creepily sailing into Wisburg, Eggers used modern technology to create a wild storm for a more dramatic arrival. Talking about the film’s ending, Eggers leaves it up to the audience to decide what it means. He said, “I think that’s for each and every audience member to decide for themselves.
But was it a sacrifice? Yes. Is there also some fulfillment? Yes. Revenge? Perhaps.
It’s meant to make people think of different interpretations.”
Eggers has already been praised for films like “The Lighthouse,” which he co-wrote and directed with his brother Max. It was nominated for Best Achievement in Cinematography at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020. He also wrote and directed the popular horror film “The Witch: A New-England Folktale,” which came out in 2015.
This year’s Oscar nominations will be announced on January 23.