First Nosferatu trailer will make you yearn for (and dread) the arrival of Bill Skarsgård’s vampire in Robert Eggers’ gothic horror

The first trailer for new vampire horror Nosferatu is here, and it’s offering up all the gothic horror goodness we could wish for. After the teaser was shown exclusively before The Bikeriders in US theaters this past weekend, it’s now crept its way online…

Directed by The Witch’s Robert Eggers, and starring Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Bill Skarsgård, the movie takes inspiration from F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent feature of the same name, and subsequently Bram Stoker’s 1987 novel Dracula. It sees Skarsgård play a “gross, but sexualized” version of Transylvanian bloodsucker Count Orlok, as he sets his sights on the wife of his estate agent – and brings terror to their small town. 

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, and Willem Dafoe round out the supporting cast.

In the brief but atmospheric clip, which you can watch above, Depp’s Ellen looks to have quite the spiritual encounter with Skarsgård’s Orlok. “Come to me, come to me, hear my call,” she pleads towards an open window, hands clasped in a praying position before she “feels” herself in a woodland, as an invisible force grabs her by the throat.

Later, Dafoe’s Van Helsing-type Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz quizzes an ailing Ellen, who seems to have been getting sicker and sicker since her “run-in” with the Count. “My dreams grow darker,” she says. “Does evil come from within us? Or from beyond?” 

Then, we get shots of Hoult looking frightened, Orlok’s gloomy hilltop castle, burning tombs, neck bites, and twisted religious rituals. We don’t actually get a good look at Orlok face-on, though, which makes all of the “he’s coming” whispers from several characters all the more foreboding.

“[Eggers] gets better and better and better, gets more articulate, more on top of it,” Dafoe, who previously worked with the writer-director on The Lighthouse and The Northman, told Indiewire last year. “He’s so clear when he works. I saw some footage when we were shooting, and I can honestly say, visually, it was like unlike anything I have seen… The look of it and how it was shot was extraordinary.”

Nosferatu is due out in US cinemas on December 25, before releasing in the UK on January 3, 2025. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies of all time or our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.