Nosferatu’s Vampire Inspiration Is Older Than You Realize

Nosferatu Released in theaters at Christmas and based on box office revenue of the filmIt seems that many horror fans have been anxious to see Bill Skarsgård’s creepy Count Orlok. a closely guarded secret before release – on the big screen. Now, David White, the film’s prosthetic makeup designer (his other credits include Guardians of the Galaxy, Crow, Miraclesand The northern man), shared a surprising tidbit about the film’s jaw-dropping climax.

If you haven’t yet sunk your teeth into Robert Eggers’ latest film…

At the end of the film, the vampire is destroyed by the only means possible: with the rays of the sun, while distracted by Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), she sacrifices herself, allowing Orlok to end his black passion in one fell swoop. right before dawn. Her death is gruesome but still gothic glamour; his death is terrible and just… terrible. Given writer-director Eggers’ trademark attention to detail, White’s explanation of how they made Orlok’s two dead appearances isn’t entirely surprising, though it’s pretty chilling.

“Robert wanted to cut to the last shot of Orlock lying dead on top of Ellen’s screams of pain, she was nothing more than a shell,” White said in an interview. Diversity. “I shared with Robert versions of the corpses in various states of decay and withering. He really wanted the feeling of Orlok sucking all the life out of him, every last drop of his blood. We took our final inspiration from a reference photo of a rediscovered body of a 5,300-year-old iceman found in the Alps.”

The end result is a mix of practical and VFX, White explained. “When I finished it, it was shot inside the scene and the VFX, then the body scan and also the Bill scan in this final look. The VFX then enhanced the painful fade-out moment between the two views to complete the scene.

What makes the desiccated “shell” feel even more dramatic is White’s other goal in the film: “I wanted to keep her age vague, ageless, so to speak,” he told Variety. “I did this by keeping the look sparser, with no hood over the lids or eye bags, paying particular attention to the amount of creases and obvious character lines. He also has to be attractive and charismatic to Ellen and able to hide his dirty rot and decay by hiding in the shadows.

The sun does not forgive whoever you are especially if you happen to be an ancient vampire. Nosferatu it’s in theaters now.

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