Nosferatu and Lily-Rose Depp Don the Freak Cap for 2024’s Biggest Horror Trend

This article contains some spoilers for “Nosferatu”.

For the most part, the trend that emerges in a particular year of cinema has nothing really competitive about it. Sure, there may be Dante’s Peak and Vulcan years, Deep Strike and Armageddon years, when very similar projects are developed to compete with each other, but most of the trends that occur are not dueling, but rather more an indicator of where the culture’s head is. Remember 2017, when John Denver’s song appeared in no fewer than five separate movies? While there is no single universal explanation for what is happening, it is intriguing and potentially enlightening to identify the trend and see what it says about today’s real world.

When determining the direction in art, especially in cinema, it is important to remember that films are made with a delay – the films of 2024 were mostly shot in 2023, conceived even earlier, and so on. Also, while news is delivered to us as quickly as possible, the impact of life-changing events also happens slowly. As a case in point: even though in 2022 we got the news of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that allowed women to exercise control over their own bodies regarding unwanted pregnancies, the effects of that reversal are now beginning to show everywhere. Hence the trend of horror films in 2024 dealing with unnatural (and highly unwanted) pregnancies, female oppression, female rage and so on.

Maybe it’s because of this real-life trauma combined with the growing buzz on social media (including news of a high-profile remake) that 1981’s Possession has only grown in stature and awareness over the past few years. Andrzej Żulawski’s surreal, theatrical film about the destruction of a marriage (if not a country and/or the world) contains one of the most iconic images of complex female anger and mental imbalance in actor Isabelle Adjani. Her performance also inspired the 2024 horror movie trend, culminating in Lily-Rose Depp’s incredible role in “Nosferatu” by Robert Eggers.

Ajani’s role in Possession is as multifaceted as the film itself. On the one hand, it’s a double role, with Ajani playing both Anna’s complicated ex-wife and Helen’s would-be new woman. Anna, on the other hand, is dealing with some mixture of mental illness, emotional trauma, stress, and other factors that cause her to give birth to some kind of … subway thing, an organism that eventually matures into something else. This “birth” scene is the most talked about moment in the entire movie, and not only has it become a meme, but it’s been honored by several horror movies this year alone.

Nunsploitation one-two punch “blameless” and “The First Sign” earlier this year involved corrupt sects in organized religion (if not society at large) to force women to give birth to unwanted babies (not to mention the titular Evil) before term. Thus, both films feature a gruesome birth scene and, in the case of The First Omen, a supernatural, sudden pregnancy. Both heroines, Cecilia (Sidney Sweeney) and Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), have to deal with their bodies being used and changed against their will. In other words, they become possessed, even if it is a child rather than a spirit or demon.

Directors Michael Mohan and Arkasha Stevenson wanted to express their respect for Zhulavsky clearly; Free on record saying that he and Stevenson used “Possession” as a reference, and Mohan stated that he showed Sweeney Ajani’s subway scene before they shot the climax of their film. The fact that both films use Adjani and Zhulauski as touchstones, combined with their lackluster performances (which are indelible in their own way) and many similarities between “Immaculate” and “The First Omen” under other circumstances might be seen as an interesting moment of parallel thinking. It’s Lily-Rose Depp’s performance in Nosferatu that helps make this exploration of female hysteria more of a trend.

Nosferatu deals with different themes than Immaculate Conception and The First Omen, but some similarities emerge. Nosferatu doesn’t have an Evil Child, but that doesn’t mean the film doesn’t have pregnancy scares. Anna Harding (Emma Corrin), the imaginary friend of Ellen Hutter (Depp) and the loving wife of Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), is happily pregnant with the couple’s third child. So when Ellen’s tormentor/predator/evil lover Count Orlak (Bill Skarsgård) turns his gaze her way, there’s something peculiarly wrong about the parasitic Orlak that sucks the mother and unborn child.

However, it is in the relationship between Orlak and Ellen that the film pays homage to The Possession and trends towards theatrical scenes in the 2024 horror film. While trying to cope with the plague of Orlak and his arrival in Germany, Ellen confesses to her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) that she has had a bad history with the vampire. She tells Thomas that she had dreams – or were they real encounters? — involving Orlak from his youth, and that these encounters are very physical. The scene illustrates the kind of power Orlak has over Ellen while also showing Ellen’s own inner darkness, a quality that beckons her husband, who completes the moment by trying to sexually supplant Orlak in Ellen’s mind.

In this scene, Depp shows Ellen’s emotional and physical struggles, culminating in her character’s suffering from conflicting thoughts and feelings that manifest as some sort of illness to those unaware. Through the performance of Ellen and Depp, the film seems to comment on the outdated concept of hysteria, which was once considered a disease exclusively for women who do not behave the way society wants them to (re: patriarchy). Like a lot of social commentary in a horror film, the film has its cake and eats it too: Ellen does suffer from the terror of an evil entity invading her mind, but she also deals with desires and needs within herself that she doesn’t want publicly confess, at least at first.

The quality that Mohan wanted to convey to Sweeney when featuring her on “Possession” during the making of “Immaculate” was that, he says, “there’s nothing to overdo.” While it’s probably just a coincidence that three horror films released in 2024 seem to pay direct homage to Adjani and Zhulauski’s film, the trend is more towards that principle than any kind of homage. In addition to these three films, we’ve had a number of horror films released this year in which the female leads display an extreme lack of restraint and decency, which is exactly what these stories, these characters, and this genre call for. As Mohan noted, such unbridled performances “provide the audience with a sense of catharsis” that we all clearly need in these troubled and traumatic times.

Such theatrical performances are not and should not be outside the norm of horror. It is this ability to strike at our deepest fears, evoke our strongest (and perhaps most repressed) emotions, and express our baser anger that makes this genre one of the most powerful in cinema and, I would argue, one of the most necessary. In such a climate, where the action of the film takes place in the fantastic land of Oz the director visually softens it to try to make it seem more like a “real place” we need films that boldly eschew the limitations of realism to lift the tension and deal with the messy, creepy, weird, uncomfortable and horrifying things we encounter on a daily basis.

Another exciting aspect of this trend is how much it’s raising the bar for women in horror, which is already a genre marked by a slew of legendarily sassy performances. While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences traditionally doesn’t often honor genre films, the skill, craftsmanship and bravery on display in horror films this year is undeniable and could make an Oscar nod irresistible. Whether these women are awarded or not, their work will live on, and the precedent they’ve set this year alone means we’re likely in for some very exciting, underwhelming material in the future. For example, who knows who might eventually be cast as the female lead in the Robert Pattinson/Parker Finn remake of The Mastery , but, well, they’ve got work to do.

Nosferatu is now in theaters.