Nosferatu hit theaters on Christmas, and based on the movie’s box-office haul, it seems many horror fans eagerly rushed out to see Bill Skarsgård’s creepy Count Orlok—whose appearance was a closely guarded secret prior to release—on the big screen. Now, David White, the movie’s prosthetic make-up designer (his other credits include Guardians of the Galaxy, The Crow, The Marvels, and The Northman), has shared a surprising tidbit about the movie’s startling climactic scene.
In case you haven’t sunk your fangs into Robert Eggers’ latest yet…
At the end of the movie, the vampire is destroyed by the only means possible: by the rays of the sun, while distracted by Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who sacrifices herself by allowing Orlok to consummate his pitch-black passion at just the right pre-dawn moment. Her death is horrible 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 crafted Orlok’s double-dead appearance is not entirely surprising, though it is appropriately gruesome.
“Robert wanted to be able to cut from the painful screams of Orlok to the final shot of him lying dead on Ellen, when he’s nothing more than a husk,” White recalled in an interview with Variety. “I shared with Robert versions of bodies in varying states of decay and wither. He really wanted the feeling of Orlok having had all life sucked from 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 iceman found in the Alps.”
The final result is a blend of practical and VFX, White explained. “When I had completed this, it was shot within the scene and VFX, then scanned the corpse and also scanned Bill in this final look. VFX then enhanced the painful withering moment between the two looks to complete the scene.”
Making the desiccated “husk” feel even more dramatic is the fact that White’s other work in the film had one goal in mind: “I was keen to keep his age ambiguous—ageless, so to speak,” he told Variety. “I did this by being very particular about the amount of wrinkles and obvious character lines, keeping the look more sparse with no hoods over his eyelids and no eye bags. He also has to be appealing and charismatic to Ellen and able to disguise his filthy rot and decay by keeping in the shadows as cover.”
The sun is unforgiving no matter who you are, but especially if you happen to be an ancient vampire. Nosferatu is in theaters now.
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