Robert Eggerss Nosferatu (in theaters December 25) is the third film to bear this name. F.W. Murnaus and Werner Herzogs adaptations share the same premise, which basically goes like this: In the late 19th century, real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) embarks on a voyage from Wisberg, Germany, to the Transylvanian castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgrd), to sell him a property. Upon arrival, Hutter enters a somnabulent hellscape punctuated and induced by Orlok taking gulps of blood from his chest. Back at home, his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) has a sick inkling about the rendezvouspartially because shes been haunted by a demonic entity all her life. This, in fact, is Orlok, who makes his way across the sea to collect her as his bride. He brings with him not only his lust for Ellen, but The Plague.The Nosferatu coffin bed, now available for purchase.Photo: Aidan Monaghan / 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLCAs a director seeking to revive the historical horror genre, Eggers is well acquainted with the dark folklore inherent to Nosferatus plot. His films explore the psychic underbelly of times and places pastand often revolve around a supernatural antagonist. Eggers and his go-to production designer Craig Lathrop also put a unique emphasis on building realistic worldstheir production design strives extra hard to close gaps between Eggerss olden aesthetic and the modern audiences perception.The more that the physical world and the inner world of the characters articulates a period in a convincing way, the more the audience can buy into and feel like the world is credible, and therefore invest in metaphysical things like vampires, Eggers says. And its easier for me to get scared by these iconic monsters if its in a period when people actually believed in them, right?A street in Wisberg, designed with Gothic brick buildings in mind by Lathrop.Photo: Aidan Monaghan / 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLCThis convincing process is painfully detail-oriented. For each movie, it seems like the director and his team sponge up enough pre-modern religion and folklore to constitute a liberal arts minors syllabus. For 2015s The Witch, Eggers recreated a 17th-century farm in New England: We tried to find a way to fake it, and we just absolutely couldnt, he said of the process. The solution was using period techniques, tools, and materials to build the farm exactly the way they wouldve done it. No big deal.As a brainstorm for Nosferatu, Eggers wrote full novellas for each of the main characters. Before it began filming in Prague two years ago, Lathrop went on scouting trips to Lubeck, Wismar, Gdansk, and Transylvaniahome to the Poeneri castle, which was exterior inspiration for Orloksand looked at lots of paintingsCaspar David Friedrichs, notablywhen designing the back lot sets of the town. They filmed on real streets too, which boasted brick Gothic buildings. Since stone wasnt common in Prague, the team brought it in to lay the large streets and some exterior details. All the buildings have a personality. I wanted to make sure that things were leaning in or out appropriately, that the medieval buildings were sagging properly, says Lathrop. Regarding interiors, the sets required sourcing Biedermeier furniture, and replicating existing frescoes from monasteries in Moldova. I didnt have the time or the money to paint them, Lathrop laughs. Also, asking somebody to paint a 15th-century masterpiece is probably a little bit tricky.Most PopularArchitecture + DesignAD100 Interior DesignersBy The Editors of ADArchitecture + DesignInside a West Village Town House Awash in Rosy HuesBy Nora TaylorCulture + Lifestyle11 Beautiful Island Hotels That Are the Height of LuxuryBy Kathryn RomeynThe monasterys interior takes inspiration from those in Moldova.Photo: Aidan Monaghan / 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLCWatching the film, todays vampire narratives come into question. Nosferatu etymologically derives from the insufferable one in archaic Romanianits a funny word to use for monstrous behavior, synonymous with uncomfortable or unpleasant, and certainly close to unbearable, which is a word used to describe Twilight in this movie subreddit I stumbled upon. Many gore-enjoyers resent how the glistening variety has diluted the vampires fear factor. They increasingly occupy the romance genre, only moonlighting as something to be scared of. The vampires flexibility is great but yeah, I wanted this to be a horror movie, Eggers says.The Roma inn, where Hutter stays before heading to Orloks castle.Photo: Aidan Monaghan / 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLCMost PopularArchitecture + DesignAD100 Interior DesignersBy The Editors of ADArchitecture + DesignInside a West Village Town House Awash in Rosy HuesBy Nora TaylorCulture + Lifestyle11 Beautiful Island Hotels That Are the Height of LuxuryBy Kathryn RomeynTo prepare, the director researched the Solomonarifolk magicians in Romanian lore. Nosferatu evokes this folklore through a magic of Eggerss own creation, drawn from ancient tales of animated corpses mobilized by demonic forces. Its seen in the seven-pointed stars wax-stamped onto Orloks contracts and coffins. He also depicts Orlok in traditional Romanian aristocratic garb, further orienting the film to 19th-century Transylvania.Given all this detail that the average viewer may not clock, I wondered if there are cons to over-research when making a horror movie. Isnt the genre about getting into peoples psyche through a back door, not climbing an ivory tower? Eggerss method may seem overkill to some, but in its defense, I believe full commitment to historical realism is what makes his movies so creepy. If the uncanny is about the familiar in the strange, Eggers lays out a historical familiar for us to find modern strangeness within. For example, Victorian medicine is not something Im familiar with at all, so when I watched a doctor press his fingers into Depps fallopian tubes to feel for consumption, I squirmed just as much as I did when I watched Hutters boss bite a pigeons head off in his holding cell. Seeing these belief systems on screen evokes a visceral disgust impossible to come by when reading about them in a textbook. Without world-building, information only becomes a can-you-believe-they-actually-did-that fun fact.A still life rife with trinkets from the house of the Harding family, who harbor Ellen as she is possessed by Count Orlok.Photo: Aidan Monaghan / 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLCMost PopularArchitecture + DesignAD100 Interior DesignersBy The Editors of ADArchitecture + DesignInside a West Village Town House Awash in Rosy HuesBy Nora TaylorCulture + Lifestyle11 Beautiful Island Hotels That Are the Height of LuxuryBy Kathryn RomeynThe Nosferatu press tour is keen on branding this film as a gothic romance, too. I think the narrative leans more into the formerconsidering the stalking, the hauntingbut the romance aspect shines through in the movies visuals, which will appeal to a particular melancholic sect of the blog generation: aesthetically feminine and already hypnotized by religious imagery, still lives of dripping candles, baroque dressing rooms, strings of seed pearlsbut also antique knives, cigarettes, and controlled spillage of blood. Movies like Black Swan have had their essence live on via film stills and memes associating various goods with an aesthetic. The final scene in the movie is a shot of Depp curled next to a decrepit male figure like Pompeiian victims, surrounded by flowers. I already see it reblogged for years to come.Speaking of digital romanticism, the visuals were what stuck with me while watching Herzogs Nosferatu a few weeks agofive black coffins in a funeral motorcade, or Isabel Adjani, apple of the internets eye, in all whitesince compared to Eggerss version, the 1979 Count Orlok seemed anachronistically campy. Is Eggerss the scariest because Im jaded and over-exposed to gory content of all sortsfictitious or otherwise?Orloks castle, sparse during daylight hours.Photo: Aidan Monaghan / 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLCThe cinematography pays homage to shadowy German Expressionism pioneered by Murnau.Photo: Aidan Monaghan / 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLCEggerss Nosferatu does pay homage to versions past: Many initial glimpses of Orlok are of his shadow, a technique that expounds upon German Expressionism. The castles bleached, sparse interior also looks a lot like the one in Herzogs film, and this new Nosferatus recurring motifsswarming rats, Catholic totems, a beach pock-marked with wonky gravessimultaneously pays tribute and blows dust off the hundred-year-old story.But maybe the dust is subjective, because my friend Maia Wyman, who critiques movies for a living, says Murnaus 1922 film is her favorite version. We saw Herzogs version together, and post-screening we talked about Nosferatus pastMurnaus version visualizes the contagion, exoticism, and sexual fluidity emblematic of its interwar context, she told me. Some people on X are saying that Herzogs version predicted AIDs, was all I could contribute. Sounds like a lot of legacy to live up to. But Wyman noted that our current moment shares a lot of similarities with the Weimar era. Our briefly permissive culture is increasingly fearful and restrictive, she said, sagely. And there are folk devils being made all around us, so maybe another Nosferatu adaptation is more necessary than ever.