Nosferatu Star Willem Dafoe Explains What Makes Reboot Different From Shadow of the Vampire

When audiences found out that Willem Dafoe would be starring in Robert Eggers' reboot of Nosferatu, many immediately made the connection to how Dafoe starred as Max Schreck in 2000's Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalized account of how the original 1922 movie was made. The actor himself, though, noted that he hadn't drawn that same connection, as the upcoming reboot is so drastically different visually and tonally from his previous foray into the world of vampires. While the 2000 movie blended together horror, drama, and comedy, the upcoming Nosferatu will likely lean most heavily into the unsettling elements of the character. Nosferatu is set to hit theaters on December 25th.

Speaking with Total Film, per GamesRadar, Dafoe expressed that the aesthetics of the new movie and "intention" are "very different."

"I think Robert and [cinematographer] Jarin [Blaschke] were in a very good place, and he's getting more and more refined," Dafoe shared with the outlet. "It's a bigger scale -- maybe not quite as big as The Northman, but he was very on top of it. I just saw some pieces, and I didn't get a sense of the film itself, but it was just beautifully photographed. I can't think of another film that quite looks like it."

Robert Eggers' Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake. The movie stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, and Willem Dafoe.    

Eggers made a name for himself in the world of horror with his debut feature The Witch, while he enlisted Dafoe alongside Robert Pattinson for The Lighthouse, with his 2022 movie The Northman venturing more into the realm of fantasy than his previous works. The filmmaker previously shared how, despite Nosferatu leaning back into the horror realm, he's still pushing himself outside his comfort zone.

"I'm trying to go beyond what I'm capable of," Eggers revealed to Empire Magazine last summer. "As always, it was a difficult shoot. Last night we were doing a scene on a ship with a lot of rain and waves, and the rain deflector, which tries to blow rain out of the lens, was breaking down and fogging." 

He added, "I spent the past several days working only with Russian sailors on a boat."

Nosferatu is set to land in theaters on December 25th.

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