'Nosferatu' Upends the Modern Vampire

Instead, Count Orlok, the titular vampire played by Bill Skarsgård under heavy prosthetics, appears cloaked in shadow living as an outcast in an isolated Transylvanian castle. When the back of his head is revealed, his flesh is rotting. He dons a thick mustache. There's a grotesqueness to his appearance. His skin looks stretched thin.

Eggers said he wanted to avoid what he called the "Anglo-literary" tradition of the vampire, which often portrays them as dazzling anti-heroes who woo women as much as they bite their necks. Rather than look to other depictions in film and television for inspiration, he rooted his Nosferatu in 18th- and 19th-century Transylvanian folklore and images of aristocrats like Count Nikolaus Esterházy from the surrounding regions.

"These early folk vampires are not pale, seductive aristocrats in dinner jackets but are obviously festering, rotten corpses," Eggers said. The result in his version is a monster that looks like he has crawled out of the grave - yet is still somehow entrancing.

The studio kept images of Orlok close to the chest to heighten the surprise of the reveal, and onscreen, his features are often hidden in darkness.

The film is loosely adapted from the landmark 1922 silent feature "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" and Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula." Eggers, who also directed folklore-influenced horror films like "The Witch" and "The Lighthouse," is known for leveraging history to fuel terror on-screen.

"Vampires have become a relatable outsider, so we had to do something different," he said. "But rather than just inventing some s- that might work or not, if it comes from somewhere, my opinion is that it will work because it did work. People who wrote about the folkloric vampire believed they existed."

In the film, Orlok has an obsession with Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp), who pledged herself to him when she was young, a moment we see in a flashback that starts the film. Forward to 1838 Germany, Ellen's husband, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), journeys to Orlok's mansion to sell him a piece of real estate in their German town. Unbeknown to Thomas, it's all part of Orlok's plan to ensnare Ellen once again.

Eggers thought of Orlok when he was alive as a "handsome dude" and wanted him to have an "oppressive, menacing, phallic energy." Sexuality, he noted, is key to vampire legends, and not just because of the suave interpretations of Hollywood.

"Some of these early reports describe the vampires as having erections, which obviously, again, is just part of the decomposition process, but was interpreted by the villagers who were exhuming these corpses as, this guy's ready to go," he said. "So even with these gross vampires that look more like a cinematic zombie, the eroticism was always there."

It's why the tales endure, even when massaged into something more palatable for modern audiences. "Death and sex seem to go hand in hand with these creatures," Skarsgård said.

Skarsgård's Orlok is sexy-at least to Ellen. He's not brawny like the six-packed vampire his brother Alexander Skarsgård played in HBO's "True Blood," but he holds power as he towers over his prey with his angular nose.

There are some of Skarsgård's good looks in Orlok. Prosthetics designer David White said he had wanted to keep elements of the actor's bone structure even though he's mostly unrecognizable. His face makeup included about 10 individual pieces and took around 4½ hours to apply. "You can see that there are shapes appearing that make his structure stronger and, in a strange way, elegant, but it's also quite intimidating as a look and it's quite scary," White said.

One of Eggers's favorite details that White included was Orlok's ears, which have decomposed to the extent that they look pointed, a nod to Max Schreck, who played the role in the 1922 version that inspired Eggers's lifelong obsession with the story.

Eggers researched the work of folklore scholars like Paul Barber and Jan Perkowski and enlisted Romanian writer and folklorist Florin Lăzărescu to identify key information and write an incantation for Orlok. Lăzărescu told Eggers that vampires were described in folklore as having red faces. There are moments revealing a tint of the color in Orlok's visage, Eggers said.

Drawing from "Dracula," Orlok is a nobleman, though traditionally vampires were not aristocratic. Costume designer Linda Muir scoured museum websites and books on military history covering the 16th and 17th centuries.

"The wealth and the luxury that was available to people in these positions was just extraordinary," Muir said. "Trying to give that heft and that gravitas to his costume, to something that could go along with that voice that he developed."

Skarsgård said he wanted Orlok to come across as "feral." For the voice, Eggers said he had sent the actor old Soviet movies for inspiration. Skarsgård came up with a growl for when Orlok sees blood.

"I wanted to make the audience feel like they're watching an animal as well as an undead sorcerer," he said.

It's that animal magnetism that attracts Ellen. Skarsgård likened Orlok's effect to a drug. "There's something you know will obliterate you," he said. "And the fact that it will obliterate you is why you pursue it."