Director Robert Eggers is following up The Witch and Nosferatu with another supernatural horror film in Werwulf, bringing Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe and Aaron Taylor-Johnson back from the 2024 vampire film for more.
And it’s the latter whose performance Eggers has heaped praise upon in a new interview with Esquire.
Speaking about the lead character — who doesn’t have a name, as apparently only the dog is named in the film — Eggers explained that: “He’s a farmer. He’s a man who is cursed.
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“It’s a story about a man who is cursed and is trying to find salvation through love. He’s a character who is haunted and in great pain.”
“It’s a really brutal, unforgiving, merciless, grotesque world. More than ever, it’s mud and blood and dung and rain and pain and suffering,” he continued.
“Aaron’s performance is incredibly harrowing. We’ll say without a doubt that it’s his best performance, and the stuff that he does physically in the transformation scenes are incredibly extreme.
“The emotional intensity he brings to role is equally as extreme.”
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He also states that Taylor-Johnson spent a lot of time with a wolf, learning its behaviour and then incorporating it into his performance.
Meanwhile, Depp plays the farmer’s wife and the mother of “several” children, with the director calling her the “heart of the movie. Lily is truly transformative
“There’s a very clear physical change in her body and her makeup, but she inhabits a very different person that’s very different from her and very different from any character she’s ever played… She’s sort of the most gracious person in the film.”
Eggers said he doesn’t want to give too much away about the film, wanting people to experience it for themselves.
“Part of this being a horror movie is that it’s about mystery and suspense and the slow burn, uncomfortable vibes that lead us into darkness and ultimately horror,” he said. “I think the less we know, the better.”
Werwulf will be release in US cinemas on Christmas Day. It looks like it might be released on New Year’s Day in the UK.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he’s covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I’m a Fish.