SPOILER WARNING
Bringing out the dead
A FRESH LOOK AT HOME ENTERTAINMENT
DIRECTOR ROBERT EGGERS LOOKS BACK ON HIS UNEXPECTED HORROR HIT, NOSFERATU
WORDS ALEX GODFREY
JUNE 2025 | EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT
“HERE WE CAN see the dogs eating the dead horse,” points out Robert Eggers on his Nosferatu commentary. “It’s a nice detail.”
This is Eggers in a nutshell. The grim everyday visuals. The passion for accuracy. The deadpan delivery. Among other things, Nosferatu’s home-entertainment release includes the extended cut (it’s four minutes longer), and Eggers’ accompanying unpacking. It’s great to have it all, when such extras are few and far between these days. “Well, I didn’t go to film school, and commentaries and special features were a lot of how I learned how to make movies,” he explains to Empire. “I think it’s important to do.”
It’s his final bit of work on a film (his fourth, after The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman) that has been in the works for decades; no use in cutting corners now, for the version that will exist forever. Eggers’ take on F.W. Murnau’s folklore interpretation of Dracula was a hit, making $180 million at the box office —a great haul for a film about an abusive rotting corpse —and was acclaimed by everyone from young goths to old masters like Martin Scorsese, who recently said it was amazing (“There’s no way that can’t make you feel good,” says Eggers). So, as the director bids farewell to Orlok, we sit down with him to close the coffin for good.
Last time we met in London, you’d been doing
Nosferatu
press all day, and when you walked in you said, “Moustache, moustache, moustache, moustache, moustache.” As in, you’d been asked about Orlok’s moustache
all
day. Were you surprised that that element was such a big deal for people?
Yeah. I mean, I get that. It’s a hard pill for some people to swallow. But I also don’t care, because there’s just no fucking way that this guy wouldn’t have a moustache. But I get it. I love the way Max Schreck looks too [in Murnau’s original], and it’s a change. So, fair play, as people say over here.