STACK #246 April 2025

MOVIE FEATURE

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OUT OF THE SHADOWS Lily-Rose Depp follows in the footsteps of AnyaTaylor-Joy to become Robert Eggers’ latest lead lady, starring in the gothic horror movie, Nosferatu . GENRE: Horror mystery RUN TIME: 2h 12m

FUN FACTS

Bill Skarsgård spent six weeks with an opera coach to perfect Orlok’s low octave accent The castle scenes were in the same location as Werner Herzog’s 1997 adaptation of Nosferatu the Vampyre . Willem Dafoe previously portrayed the original Nosferatu actor Max Schreck in the behind-the-scenes Nosfetaru biopic Shadow of the Vampire (2000) Roberg Eggers had been trying to get Nosferatu made since 2015. The film is produced by Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire director Chris Columbus. ABOUT NOSFERATU

I n common with Eggers’ other screen sirens, Depp’s Ellen Hutter is no shrinking violet - and possibly the only hope for the poor German townsfolk who are powerless against Count Orlok, an ancient Transylvanian vampire. A remake of the 1922 German film of the same name - itself an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897

like accent,” she says of younger brother Jack. ”So, from an early age, that was a big part of my childhood, and then loving the more classical takes with Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee and even Dracula: Dead and

novel Dracula - the film also stars Nicholas Hoult, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Willem Dafoe, and Bill Skarsgard as Nosferatu. Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’ French-American daughter apparently grew up as your average vampire-loving kid. ”I’ve always been fascinated with Dracula lore - even the comedic take on it, like my brother and I used to watch the Abbott & Costello Meet the Monsters a lot when we were little,” says Depp, 25. ”And my brother became obsessed with Dracula , and started dressing up like him and would only speak in this Transylvanian

Lily-Rose Depp

Loving It, ” she says, referring to Mel Brooks’s 1995 parody.

For Eggers’ part, he has long been entranced by the 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror . ”Max Schreck’s performance [as Nosferatu] and the makeup he wore really struck me and was so compelling, as well as the haunting atmosphere, and the way that director F.W. Murnau and his screenwriter Henrik Galeen turned the Stoker story into a very simple and enigmatic fairy tale,” says Eggers, who is captivated by the supernatural as demonstrated in his films The Northman, The Witch, and The Lighthouse . Gill Pringle

• Nosferatu is out Apr 2

SINK YOUR TEETH INTO SOME OF THESE SUCKERS:

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Dracula Untold (2014) , Van Helsing (2004)

REINVENTING WOLF MAN Aussie horror hall-of-famer Leigh Whannell follows up his hit reimagining of The Invisible Man with Wolf Man , another bold take on a classic. ”T his stuff is always accidental,” he admits to STACK ahead of the film’s GENRE: Horror fantasy RUN TIME: 1h 43m by a mysterious creature matching the description of a local legend. As a treat for fans, Whannell has loaded up on homages and Easter WOLF MAN

• Wolf Man is out Apr 16

worldwide release. ”I don’t have some sort of grand plan to do three monster movies to cap off a trilogy, but we’ll see what happens.” Whannell was catapulted to Hollywood’s heights in the early 2000s when Saw , the horror phenomenon he co-created with James Wan, became a juggernaut. ”Blumhouse and Universal approached me with this character and, at the time, Ryan Gosling was attached. And I did have an initial feeling that maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. ”I love the Wolf Man character, but I just felt that maybe it wasn’t

eggs, with various shots and sequences paying tribute to other classics, including one particularly cheeky challenge for Saw fans. ”Even if it’s happening at a subconscious level, it’s still intentional,” he says of the various throwbacks. ”Because it’s

FUN FACT

”And then some things are more conscious,” he says with excitement, adding, ”There’s one that people haven’t spotted yet. In every movie, I like to put the Jigsaw puppet in there. It was in The Invisible Man , and it was in Upgrade . It’s like a little tradition, and there is one in Wolf Man , but I haven’t heard anyone spot it yet. I made this one pretty tough to spot.” Glenn Cochrane

the time for me to do it. But once I found a way in, what would be my take or my version

Before Saw , Leigh Whannell was the in house film critic on ABC TV’s hit music show Recovery .

of it, I had to make it. I went from being cautious about doing it to needing to make it.” In the film, Christopher Abbott plays a family man who returns to his childhood home with his wife and daughter, only to be attacked

all in there, like that shot in An American Werewolf in London where we’re looking down the escalators at the wolf slowly approach.

LIKE THIS? YOU’LL LOVE THESE:

Invisible Man, Val Helsing, The Mummy trilogy, An American Werewolf in London

10 APRIL 2025

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