Robert Eggers had dreamed of making Nosferatu for years before finally releasing it in late 2024. When the movie hit the screens, he shared what inspired its dark, gothic look.
Eggers had loved the 1922 silent German horror film Nosferatu since he was a kid. Although he planned to remake it after his 2015 directorial debut The Witch, he decided to wait. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz, Eggers revealed that Tim Burton’s work played a surprising role in shaping his vision for the movie.
Eggers shared during the Happy Sad Confused podcast that Tim Burton’s Batman Returns was a major inspiration for Nosferatu. Around the 18:41 mark, he said,
Tim Burton and I think, it’s kind of crazy, I was watching on one of these flights, I threw on Batman Returns, and the snowy, gothic atmosphere of that movie is, it’s quite like, shockingly similar to a lot of what we were doing here, which is something I never really considered at all.
Horowitz pointed out a fun connection: Batman Returns has a character named Max Shreck, the same name as the actor who played Count Orlok in the original 1922 Nosferatu. Eggers added,
It sure does, and Wayne Manor doesn’t look a hell of a lot different than Grünewald Manor.
Eggers also mentioned that Kenneth Branagh, Terry Gilliam, and David Lynch were big influences on his work. He shared that he watched every vampire movie ever made to help him decide what to include and what to avoid when creating Count Orlok. Classic films like 1961’s The Innocents and Ingmar Bergman’s 1972 Cries and Whispers were also key inspirations for the movie.
See More: Robert Eggers Says He Tried to Make a ‘Frankenstein’ Film at One Point
In an interview with IndieWire, Eggers explained that it’s not sunlight that kills vampires, despite what F.W. Murnau’s film suggests.
It’s not sunlight; it’s just the fact that it is dawn that kills him. In the folklore — which we say in my film, which is pre-Murnau — the vampire must go back to its grave before the first crow of cock. So it’s not that vampires are allergic to sunlight in the folklore, and that the sun burns and kills them. It’s that the purity and the redemption of dawn doesn’t work for a demonic being.
The well-known filmmaker also made sure to steer clear of vampire clichés. He wanted to bring back the fearsome vibe of vampires, unlike Edward Cullen, and mentioned that Mel Brooks’ 1995 comedy Dracula: Dead and Loving It showed him what to avoid when making the film.
There are a lot of scenes that were purposely rewritten after watching the Mel Brooks movie, and thinking, ‘Wow, that totally doesn’t make sense.’
He also explained the common misconception about the stake, saying that in his Nosferatu, the stake goes through the navel, not the heart.
You’re just trying to stake them into the ground so they don’t move, It’s not really about killing them.
he said,
He shared the same thoughts on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, adding that “it was probably among the most helpful because Mel Brooks points out everything idiotic about the story and all the traps and pitfalls.”
You can now stream Nosferatu digitally.
Source: Happy Sad Confused