The Christmas film Robert Eggers Nosferatu is an adaptation of the silent vampire classic. So does the prestige-cult director.
Like most festive films released during this time of year, the picture is set against the backdrop of Yuletide, despite its focus on a monster’s desire for blood and psychological dominance.
In an interview with NBC News earlier this month, Eggers said, “The Christmas release date was a pitch from Focus Features [the film’s distributor].” And I was rather pleased with it because of the movie’s content and my own interests.
(NBC News and Focus Features are owned by NBCUniversal.)
Moviegoers have been getting their scare on for years thanks to the Christmas horror genre. Consider the Silent Night of 1984, the Deadly Night of 1984, and the Christmas Evil of 1980.There is enough of matinee-show chaos even in Steven Spielberg’s 1984 big-budget film Gremlins.
These movies have established themselves as Christmas movie staples, and Nosferatu may soon follow suit as another unfunny classic.
According to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, a Christmas Day release such as Nosferatu is like a much-needed eerie gift for moviegoers and horror enthusiasts alike who want to counterprogram as the song goes with a very unusual holiday moviegoing experience.
There is a hunger among spectators. Terrifier 3 became the highest-grossing unrated film earlier this year and will be available on Blu-ray and 4K disc in time for stocking stuffers. As he cuts through the snow, its main character, the evil Art the Clown, disguises himself as Father Christmas.
Shudder’s The Last Drive-In, a streaming service hosted by trash movie guru Joe Bob Briggs, likewise embodies the Christmas horror atmosphere. For six years now, the series has released a Christmas special accompanied by a charity auction that gives fans a chance to bid on items ranging from props to Cracker Barrel meals with Joe Bob.
We raised, I think, almost half a million for various charities, and that helps set that episode apart from our normal Last Drive-In episodes, Matt Manjourides, a co-creator and producer of the show, said.
The gory double feature Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale and It’s a Wonderful Knife is included on this year’s program. The auction is open till Christmas.
The Last Drive-In approach to the holiday isn t exactly highbrow, but it s all about fun and community, in Manjourides view.
And when it comes to Christmas horror, there s not much daylight between the grits and grease of the Joe Bob Briggs world and Eggers ecstatic gothic glories. Both Manjourides and the Nosferatu director cited 1974 proto-slasher Black Christmas as a prime example of the category.
Black Christmas own pedigree shows just how flexible Christmas can be at the movies, no matter the genre. That film s director, the late Bob Clark, would eventually apply his holly-jolly-terror talents to a harrowing Santa Claus scene in another cult favorite 1983 s A Christmas Story.
The vampire in winter
Eggers bloodsucker saga is the third Nosferatu, following F.W. Murnau s unauthorized Dracula adaptation in 1922 and Werner Herzog s remake in 1979. The 41-year-old American director had for years wanted to bring his own sensibilities to the story of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsg rd) and his parasitic link to Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp).
Bram Stoker s original 1897 novel begins around Walpurgisnacht, a European springtime festival often associated with spirits and witchcraft. But Eggers aesthetic is autumnal and wintry, and Christmas was part of his Nosferatu plans early on. There is something cozy about a ghost story around the fire when it s cold out, he said, evoking Charles Dickens classic ghost story A Christmas Carol.
The wintry setting made sense for the plot of Nosferatu, too. The vampire is coming at Christmastime and it sort of heightens the emotional stakes, Eggers said.
While the vampire s plague spreads, actual holiday imagery gets only minor screen time. Still, given Eggers passion for detail, even that required specialized craftwork for the 1830s-set film.
I did do a bunch of research on what Christmas would look like at the time, and Christmas trees that were on tables, which seemed a little bit different to me, to my modern eyes, production designer Craig Lathrop told NBC News.
Lathrop s team found a company outside Prague, where much of the movie was shot, that still possessed 200-year-old molds to make little glass ornaments for the tabletop tree. They also learned that people of that era would fill the decorations with wax.
So we did it, and it looked fantastic, he said.
Whether the ghoulish gambit of the movie s Christmas release pays off remains to be seen. Eggers won a fervent following with The Witch in 2015. The period creepfest cleared $25.1 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to Comscore, more than six times its reported budget. His other features, 2019 s The Lighthouse and 2022 s The Northman, bolstered his fan base, although neither set the box office on fire.
It s also usually a time for families to catch up on fare like Paramount s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and for adults to flock to potential Oscar contenders such as Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and the Nicole Kidman-starring Babygirl.
Nosferatu, though, could lure moviegoers with a mix of critical buzz and a star-studded cast, including Depp, Skarsg rd, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin.
There s also precedent for a horror film scaring up big bucks during the holidays: The Exorcist, released on Dec. 26, 1973,grossed nearly $200 million.
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