If Robert Eggers has a holiday lane now, it is apparently cursed Christmas counterprogramming. After turning December 25 into vampire season with “Nosferatu,” the filmmaker is heading back to theaters this Christmas with “Werwulf,” his new medieval horror film for Focus Features starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Ralph Ineson.
Focus has released the official trailer for “Werwulf,” which the studio describes as “a harrowing tale of devotion, damnation and the devil within.” The film marks Eggers’ fifth feature after “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” “The Northman,” and “Nosferatu,” and reunites him with several of the actors from that last gothic nightmare. This time, though, Eggers is trading vampires for lycanthropy and moving even deeper into the past, with Taylor-Johnson playing a cursed farmer in 13th-century England.
The timing is smart, too. Beyond Fest hosted “A Decade of Decay: A Robert Eggers Marathon” yesterday at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, screening “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” “The Northman,” and “Nosferatu,” with Eggers appearing for a Q&A and attendees getting a first look at exclusive “Werwulf” material. In other words, Focus is giving the film a proper genre-cinephile rollout before it tries to make Christmas Day grim, muddy, and moonlit.
Eggers has been teasing the film’s historically rooted approach in recent months. In an Esquire first-look interview, he said the story takes place around 1300, tied to the decline of wolves in England and the way medieval werewolf lore grew out of attempts to explain violence that seemed beyond human comprehension. He also said “Werwulf” avoids the more familiar pop-culture rules of the genre—silver bullets, bites, and the usual “Wolf Man” baggage—in favor of its period mythology.
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That tracks with the official trailer, which looks less like a slick creature feature and more like another of Eggers’ immersive historical nightmares, built around faith, fear, superstition, and bodily ruin. In a more recent Polygon interview, Eggers called the film “more of an evolution than a leap” from “Nosferatu,” adding that the Welsh forests proved unexpectedly difficult because “the forest has its own rules.”
Focus chairman Peter Kujawski has also been touting the film’s scale. In a Letterboxd interview, Kujawski said Eggers’ teaser was so distinct that it hardly needed the filmmaker’s name attached, adding, “Werwulf is on a whole other level” and “No one has seen a movie that looks or feels like this movie does.”
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“Werwulf” is written by Eggers and Sjón, who previously collaborated on “The Northman,” and produced by Eggers, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Garrett Bird, and Sjón. The film opens in theaters on December 25, 2026. Watch the trailer below.
- Rodrigo Perez
