Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu brings blood and horror to the cinema this Christmas

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, an update of the silent vampire classic, is a Christmas film. Even the prestige cult director believes so.

While the film is about a monster’s bloodlust and his psychic dominance, the backdrop is the Christmas season, just like other festive film offerings at this time of year.

“Focus Features (the film’s distributor) gave me a Christmas release date,” Eggers said in an interview with NBC News earlier this month. “And because of the content of the film and because of my particular interests, I was really happy about it.”

(NBCUniversal is the parent company of Focus Features and NBC News.)

For years, the Christmas horror genre has helped film fans spread their terror. Think 1984’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night” and 1980’s “Christmas Evil.” Even “Gremlins,” a major 1984 studio release from Steven Spielberg, bristles with matinee-show chaos.

These films have become part of holiday film culture – and now Nosferatu could be joining them as another not-so-festive flick.

“A holiday release like ‘Nosferatu’ is like a welcome spooky gift for film fans and horror fans alike who want to, as the song goes, counterprogram ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ with a very unconventional holiday cinematic experience.” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst from Comscore, said.

The audience’s appetite is there. “Terrifier 3,” arriving on Blu-ray and 4K disc just in time to be a top seller, became the highest-grossing unrated film earlier this year. Its central character, the demonic clown Art, dresses up as Santa Claus while cutting through the snow.

The Christmas horror spirit lives on in “The Last Drive-In” on the streaming service Shudder, hosted by trash cinema expert Joe Bob Briggs. For six years, the series has released a holiday special accompanied by a charity auction where fans have the opportunity to bid on items ranging from props to Cracker Barrel meals with Joe Bob.

“We raised, I think, close to half a million for various charities, and that helps set this episode apart from our normal ‘Last Drive-In’ episodes,” said Matt Manjourides, co-creator and producer of the show.

This year’s special features the bloody double feature “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale” and “It’s a Wonderful Knife.” The auction runs until Christmas.

The Last Drive-In approach to the holiday isn’t exactly highbrow, but Manjourides says it’s all about fun and community.

And when it comes to Christmas horror, there isn’t much light between the grit and grease of Joe Bob Briggs’ world and Eggers’ ecstatic gothic splendor. Both Manjourides and the “Nosferatu” director cited the 1974 proto-slasher “Black Christmas” as a prime example of this category.

“Black Christmas”’s own family tree shows how flexible Christmas in the cinema can be, regardless of the genre. That film’s director, the late Bob Clark, eventually used his talents as a gleeful terrorist in a harrowing Santa Claus scene in another cult film – 1983’s “A Christmas Story.”

The vampire in winter

Eggers’ bloodsucker saga is the third “Nosferatu” after FW Murnau’s illicit 1922 “Dracula” adaptation and Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake. The 41-year-old American director has wanted to bring his own sensibility to the story of Count Orlok ( Bill Skarsgård) and his parasitic connection to Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp).

Bram Stoker’s original 1897 novel begins around Walpurgis Night, a European spring festival often associated with ghosts and witchcraft. But Eggers’ aesthetic is autumnal and wintry, and Christmas was part of his “Nosferatu” plans early on. “There’s something cozy about a ghost story by the fire when it’s cold outside,” he said, recalling the classic ghost story “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens.

The wintry setting also made sense for the plot of “Nosferatu.” “The vampire comes at Christmas time and that kind of ups the emotional stakes,” Eggers said.

As the vampire plague spreads, the actual holiday pictures are rarely shown. But given Eggers’ attention to detail, even that required special craftsmanship for the film set in the 1830s.

“I did a lot of research about what Christmas looked like back then and what Christmas trees were on tables, which seemed a little different to my modern eyes,” production designer Craig Lathrop told NBC News.

Lathrop’s team found a company outside Prague, where much of the film was shot, that still had 200-year-old molds to make small glass ornaments for the tabletop tree. They also learned that the people of that time filled the decorations with wax.

“So we did it and it looked amazing,” he said.

Whether the scary gambit of releasing the film on Christmas pays off remains to be seen. Eggers gained a fervent fan base in 2015 with “The Witch.” According to Comscore, the period creepfest grossed $25.1 million in the U.S. and Canada, 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 wowed the box office.

It’s also usually a time for families to catch up on films like Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and for adults to flock to potential Oscar contenders like the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and “Babygirl.” “ with Nicole Kidman in the lead role.

However, “Nosferatu” could lure moviegoers with a mix of critical hype and a star-studded cast including Depp, Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin.

There’s also a precedent for a horror film making big money during the holidays: “The Exorcist,” released in theaters on December 26, 1973, grossed nearly $200 million.