The new official trailer for Werwulf has arrived, and Robert Eggers‘ fingerprints are all over it. Aaron Taylor-Johnson leads the medieval horror film, which comes drenched in mud, superstition, firelight and the kind of thick folk-horror atmosphere that immediately brings The Witch, The Lighthouse and Nosferatu to mind. Watch the trailer above and get the details below.
A Medieval Werewolf Nightmare
Set in England in 1305, Werwulf follows Taylor-Johnson as a mute farmer hiding a fairly major family secret: every full moon, he’s cursed to transform into a murderous werewolf. Things take an especially dangerous turn when a hunting party, ordered by the king to rid the land of wolves, arrives and forces him to join them.
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The new footage pushes further into the horror of that predicament, with Taylor-Johnson struggling to contain what’s happening to him as the hunt closes in. There are bloodied bodies, frightened villagers, grim religious imagery and flashes of a particularly unpleasant transformation, although Eggers is wisely still keeping the full creature under wraps.
“The stuff that he does physically in the transformation scenes are incredibly extreme,” Eggers told Esquire of Taylor-Johnson’s performance.
Eggers’ Signature Is All Over It
At this point, Eggers has etched out a visual language that’s recognisable almost immediately. He again opts for an unusually narrow frame, this time 1.37:1, while cinematographer Jarin Blaschke brings heavy grain, drained colours, sickly complexions and harsh natural light to an England that looks thoroughly miserable to inhabit. The Witch‘s folk-horror dread is there, as is the grime of The Lighthouse and some of the striking Gothic imagery of Nosferatu, but five films in, this increasingly just looks like Eggers.
That obsessive period approach extends to the dialogue. Eggers and co-writer Sjón worked with Oxford professors on Middle English before tempering the pronunciation so modern audiences could understand it. The werewolf mythology has received similar treatment, with Eggers stripping away many of the conventions added by later movies and digging into much older folklore.
The setting itself grew out of that research. As Eggers explained to Esquire, efforts were made to eradicate England’s wolves around this period, in part to protect the wool trade, meaning the story needed to take place early enough for both wolves and local werewolf beliefs to still make sense. Older European accounts also connected supposed werewolves with people committing acts so horrific that others struggled to view them as human at all.
It’s appropriately grim material for a filmmaker who went into the project wanting to scare himself. “You’re always trying to push yourself and challenge yourself and bite off more than you can chew so you can get better,” Eggers said at a special footage presentation at the Universal lot (as quoted by TheWrap). His aim was to top Nosferatu and attempt to pen his scariest work yet. He added, “I don’t know that I did that, but I definitely wrote the darkest thing.”
There’s a Big Nosferatu Reunion Here
Werwulf also brings a sizeable chunk of the Nosferatu gang back together. Taylor-Johnson is joined by Lily-Rose Depp as his wife and Willem Dafoe as the hunter leading the campaign against the wolves, while Ralph Ineson, who appeared in both The Witch and Nosferatu, is also back.
The reunion extends behind the camera, with Eggers again working with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, editor Louise Ford, production designer Craig Lathrop and costume designer Linda Muir. Robin Carolan returns to provide the score, while Sjón reunites with Eggers as co-writer following their work together on The Northman.
When Is Werwulf Released?
Werwulf opens in US cinemas on December 25, 2026, exactly two years after Nosferatu received its Christmas Day release. Australian audiences have a slightly longer wait, with Werwulf opening in Australian cinemas on January 1, 2027.
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