Bill Skarsgård is playing Nosferatu/Count Orlok in Robert Eggers’ (The Witch, The Lighthouse) new movie Nosferatu, and audiences can see the vampire’s appearance on the big screen on Christmas Day. But there’s a lot more to Count Orlok than a surprising visage. Releasing in theaters on Christmas, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a […]
Eggers dove deep when researching for Nosferatu, pulling from folklore for his central antagonist. In other words, he had a specific vision in mind for Count Orlok. Yet Skarsgård still brought something unexpected to his performance that surprised the director and added depth to the vampire’s connection to Ellen.
Eggers tells us about his Count Orlok, “I mean, I suppose it is in the writing. I was thinking back to [George Gordon] Byron’s poem, that was potentially one of the first or second times that a vampire is mentioned in English language literature, and even there, the vampire, in the Anglo-literary tradition, has some melancholy and some pathos. So I suppose I was thinking about that.
“But I was so obsessed with making him a villain that I sort of forgot about it. And Bill brought that pathos. It was really important because it’s obviously Ellen’s story; she’s the victim of this vampire, and she’s also the hero of the story. But Orlok is just as alone as she is.“
It’s that strange loneliness of both characters that’s at the heart of Nosferatu. I wrote in my review, “Nosferatu isn’t a love story in the conventional sense – this demonic Strigoi isn’t capable of such an emotion – but it does depict one of the most riveting and macabre love triangles in cinema. Thomas and Ellen’s love is pure and wholesome and occasionally even raw, but Ellen remains an irresistible siren to her violent, evil ex-lover. One willing to destroy everything.”
My 5-star review for Bloody Disgusting continues, “It’s a grotesque twist on a love triangle, one that Eggers fearlessly pushes into revolting territory thanks to his eponymous vampire.“
