Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” an update of the silent vampire classic, is a Christmas movie. Even the prestige-cult director thinks so.
While the film is about a monster’s thirst for blood and psychic domination, the backdrop is yuletide season, just like other festive movie offerings during this time of year.
“Focus Features [the film’s distributor] pitched the Christmas release date to me,” Eggers told NBC News in an interview earlier this month. “And because of what was in 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 movie fans get their scare on. Think: 1984’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night” and 1980’s “Christmas Evil.” Even “Gremlins,” a major studio release produced by Steven Spielberg in 1984, is bursting with matinee-show mayhem.
These films have become part of holiday movie culture — and now, “Nosferatu” could join them as another not-so-festive flick.
“A Christmas Day release like ‘Nosferatu’ is like a much welcome creepy gift for film fans and horror buffs alike looking to counterprogram — as the song goes — ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ with a very unconventional holiday moviegoing experience,” Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst, said.
The appetite from audiences is there. “Terrifier 3,” which is out on Blu-ray and 4K disc in time to be a stocking stuffer, became the highest-grossing unrated film earlier this year. Its central character, the demonic Art the Clown, dresses as Father Christmas while slashing through the snow.
The Christmas horror spirit also lives in streaming service Shudder’s “The Last Drive-In,” hosted by trash cinema maven Joe Bob Briggs. For six years now, the series has released a Christmas special accompanied by a charity auction that gives fans a chance to bid on items ranging from props to Cracker Barrel meals with Joe Bob.
“We raised, I think, almost half a million for various charities, and that helps set that episode apart from our normal ‘Last Drive-In’ episodes,” Matt Manjourides, a co-creator and producer of the show, said.
This year’s special showcases the bloody double feature “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale” and “It’s a Wonderful Knife.” The auction runs through Christmas.
The “Last Drive-In” approach to the holiday isn’t exactly highbrow, but it’s all about fun and community, in Manjourides’ view.
And when it comes to Christmas horror, there’s not much daylight between the grits and grease of the Joe Bob Briggs world and Eggers’ ecstatic gothic glories. Both Manjourides and the “Nosferatu” director cited 1974 proto-slasher “Black Christmas” as a prime example of the category.
“Black Christmas’” own pedigree shows just how flexible Christmas can be at the movies, no matter the genre. That film’s director, the late Bob Clark, would eventually apply his holly-jolly-terror talents to a harrowing Santa Claus scene in another cult favorite — 1983’s “A Christmas Story.”
The vampire in winter
Eggers’ bloodsucker saga is the third “Nosferatu,” following F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized “Dracula” adaptation in 1922 and Werner Herzog’s remake in 1979. The 41-year-old American director had for years wanted to bring his own sensibilities to the story of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) and his parasitic link to Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp).
Bram Stoker’s original 1897 novel begins around Walpurgisnacht, a European springtime festival often associated with spirits and witchcraft. But Eggers’ aesthetic is autumnal and wintry, and Christmas was part of his “Nosferatu” plans early on. “There is something cozy about a ghost story around the fire when it’s cold out,” he said, evoking Charles Dickens’ classic ghost story “A Christmas Carol.”
The wintry setting made sense for the plot of “Nosferatu,” too. “The vampire is coming at Christmastime and it sort of heightens the emotional stakes,” Eggers said.
While the vampire’s plague spreads, actual holiday imagery gets only minor screen time. Still, given Eggers’ passion for detail, even that required specialized craftwork for the 1830s-set film.
“I did do a bunch of research on what Christmas would look like at the time, and Christmas trees that were on tables, which seemed a little bit different to me, to my modern eyes,” production designer Craig Lathrop told NBC News.
Lathrop’s team found a company outside Prague, where much of the movie was shot, that still possessed 200-year-old molds to make little glass ornaments for the tabletop tree. They also learned that people of that era would fill the decorations with wax.
“So we did it, and it looked fantastic,” he said.
It’s also usually a time for families to catch up on fare like Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and for adults to flock to potential Oscar contenders such as Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and the Nicole Kidman-starring “Babygirl.”
“Nosferatu,” though, could lure moviegoers with a mix of critical buzz and a star-studded cast, including Depp, Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin.
There’s also precedent for a horror film scaring up big bucks during the holidays: “The Exorcist,” released on Dec. 26, 1973, grossed nearly $200 million.
