Robert Eggers
- In full:
- Robert Houston Eggers
- Born:
- July 7, 1983, New York City, New York, U.S. (age 41)
- Notable Works:
- “Nosferatu”
- “The Lighthouse”
- “The Northman”
- “The Witch”
What are some films directed by Robert Eggers?
What themes are common in Robert Eggers’s films?
What was Robert Eggers’s first full-length feature film?
What inspired the film The Northman?
What awards did The Witch receive?
Robert Eggers (born July 7, 1983, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American filmmaker known for writing and directing The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), The Northman (2022), and Nosferatu (2024). Eggers has been praised for his stylistic take on period horror and drama and for drawing on themes from folklore in his films.
Early life and initial shorts
“Dilapidated colonial farms, witches—those were part of the childhood folklore I was into. And now, fairytales, folk tales comparative religion and mythology are my biggest interests.”—Robert Eggers in an interview with Filmmaker Magazine
At a young age, Eggers moved with his mother from New York to Wyoming, where Eggers’s mother met his stepfather, Walter Eggers. As a child, Robert Eggers enjoyed comics, but when introduced to woodcuts made by a friend of his parents, he became a self-described “snob and a dilettante,” taking a deeper interest in fantastical beings such as satyrs and demons. When his stepfather became the provost of the University of New Hampshire, the family relocated to the small town of Lee. As a teen, Eggers was involved in running the children’s theater company Oyster River Players, which was corun by his mother. In 2001 Eggers enrolled in the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, though he continued to visit New Hampshire regularly to stage plays that he would also act in.
Eggers experimented artistically and worked as a designer for theater, dance, television, film, and print, while also creating his own short films. In 2007 his film Hansel & Gretel, a black-and-white silent film adaptation of the Brothers Grimm tale, was first shown at the Boston Underground Film Festival. The following year he adapted the classic Edgar Allen Poe story into the short The Tell-Tale Heart (2008), which played at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival and the Woods Hole Film Festival in 2009. Both works helped Eggers to perfect the uncanny style of horror that would later appear in his full-length films.
The Witch and The Lighthouse
After making his short Brothers (2015), Eggers wrote and directed The Witch (2015), his first full-length feature film. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, alongside Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie, The Witch follows a religious 17th-century New England family after the youngest member goes missing. Eggers researched puritanical belief systems, vocabulary and grammatical structures, and witch folklore off-and-on for four years while conceptualizing the film. The film received critical praise and earned Eggers the directing award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, as well as two Film Independent Spirit awards for best first feature and best first screenplay. The film also brought Taylor-Joy mainstream attention. Following Eggers’s Sundance win, it was announced that he was set to write and direct a remake of the 1922 vampire film Nosferatu.
Eggers’s next feature film was The Lighthouse (2019), starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as lighthouse keepers in the late 19th century. Eggers cowrote the film with his brother, Max Eggers. The film was released in black and white with a boxy 1.19:1 aspect ratio, mirroring late 19th-century films. The production team also used lenses from the early 20th century to shoot the film. The Lighthouse received positive critical reviews and was awarded the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
The Northman and Nosferatu
Following The Lighthouse, Eggers cowrote and directed The Northman (2022), in which a Viking prince (Alexander Skarsgård) attempts to avenge his father’s death. The film is loosely based on the story of Amleth, a likely fictional Viking who served as the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Eggers cowrote the film with Sjón, an Icelandic novelist. The film also stars Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, and Claes Bang, as well as previous collaborators Taylor-Joy and Dafoe. Like his previous two features, The Northman was praised by critics.
Robert Eggers recalled in an interview with American Cinematographer that he had first seen Nosferatu (1922) when he was just nine years old. As a teenager, he staged a silent play of Nosferatu at a small New Hampshire theater. Although it would be about two decades before he would create the full-length feature film, Eggers stated that he was able to use his vastly improved technical skills to more effectively create what he had imagined growing up.
Eggers’s take on Nosferatu came into fruition in February 2023, with initial filming in Prague. The film stars Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nicholas Hoult, Emma Corrin, and Dafoe. Nosferatu was released in U.S. theaters on December 25, 2024, to positive reception.