Nosferatu’s vampiric inspiration is even older than you might realize

Nosferatu hit theaters of Christmas, and based on the business of the filmIt seems that many horror fans rushed anxiously to see Bill Skarsgård’s terrible Count Orlok – whose appearance was a well-kept secret before release – on the big screen. Now, David White, the film’s prosthetic makeup designer (his other credits include Guardians of the Galaxy, The Crow, The wondersand The Man of the North), shared a surprising bit about the film’s climactic scene.

In case you haven’t sunk your fangs into Robert Eggers’ latest latest…

At the end of the film, the vampire is destroyed by the only possible means: by the sun’s rays, while distracted by Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who sacrifices herself to allow Orlok to consume his black passion as and pitch the moment just before dawn. Her death is horrific, but still gothically glamorous; his death is horrible and just… horrible. Given writer-director Eggers’ trademark attention to detail, White’s explanation of how they made Orlok’s double-dead appearance isn’t entirely surprising, though appropriate.

“Robert wanted to be able to cut from Orlok’s painful screams to the last shot of him lying dead on top of Ellen, when she is nothing more than a husk,” White recalled in an interview with Variety. “I shared with Robert versions of bodies in various states of decay and dryness. I really wanted the feeling of Orlok having had all his life sucked out of him, every last drop of blood. We took our final inspiration from a reference photo of a rediscovered body of a 5,300-year-old ice man found in the Alps”.

The end result is a mix of practical and VFX, White explained. “When I finished this, it was shot in the scene and VFX, then scanned the corpse and also scanned Bill in this final look. The VFX added the painful drying moment between the two looks to complete the scene.

Making the desiccated “skin” feel even more dramatic is the fact that White’s other work in the film had a purpose in mind: “I wanted to keep his age ambiguous — ageless, so to speak,” he said. at Variety. “I did this to be very particular about the amount of wrinkles and obvious character lines, keeping the look more spread out without hoods on the eyelids and without bags under the eyes. It also had to be attractive and charismatic for Ellen and able to conceal its rot and putrefaction, keeping it in the shadows as a cover.

The sun is not forgiving, no matter who you are, but especially if you are an ancient vampire. Nosferatu it’s in theaters now.

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