{"id":11179,"date":"2026-06-29T16:22:48","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T13:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/?p=11179"},"modified":"2026-06-30T12:34:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T09:04:37","slug":"werwulf-trailer-explained-if-youre-not-smelling-the-shit-youre-not-experiencing-it-properly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/werwulf-trailer-explained-if-youre-not-smelling-the-shit-youre-not-experiencing-it-properly\/","title":{"rendered":"Werwulf Trailer Explained: \u2018If You\u2019re Not Smelling The Shit, You\u2019re Not Experiencing It Properly\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n

He\u2019s given us witches, Vikings, vampires and \u2013 perhaps his biggest monster of all \u2013 Willem Dafoe\u2019s maniacal lighthouse keeper. His films are steeped in folklore, committed to undying (or undead) detail in the name of convincingly nightmarish experiences \u2013 so of all people, we can trust Robert Eggers to do right by lycanthropes.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

In Werwulf<\/em>, set at the start of the 14th century, Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as a nameless farmer who, well\u2026 let\u2019s just say that things might get a little hairy. As his wife (Lily-Rose Depp) pleads in the teaser: \u201cKeep my husband safe from his cursedness.\u201d Do we detect a story about uncontrollable urges? Is this a severe case of anger management? \u201cI think you\u2019re onto something!\u201d, laughs Eggers. Here, he gives us a breakdown of that teaser\u2019s key moments.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

EMPIRE: You kick things off with a full moon. What did you learn about that sort of iconography and mythology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

ROBERT EGGERS:<\/strong> For the werewolf nerds out there, it\u2019s commonly stated that the full moon\u2019s connection to werewolves began in cinema. But I found a very, very old English text \u2013 older than the period of the film \u2013 that does say that werewolves are affected by the cycle of the moon. And there is also some stuff in some Icelandic literature. So… I went for it.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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Aaron’s performance is truly harrowing. I\u2019m super proud of what he did.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

In terms of werewolf cinema, how did you go about making the film convincing and grounding it, making it not goofy? There are many potential pitfalls.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, going back to the old folklore is a way in, because you\u2019re going to find different stuff \u2013 the tropes aren\u2019t the same tropes that are so tired that they\u2019ve become clich\u00e9s. So that in and of itself gives it some freshness. I\u2019ve also struggled with the creature, because it\u2019s difficult in monster movies to make the monster convincing. I think that\u2019s another pitfall of werewolf movies \u2013 they either look like guys in suits, or they look like CG. Are you willing to go along with that, knowing that they look seriously fake, or not? One of the best horror movies \u2013 and monster movies \u2013 of all time, is the first Alien<\/em>, where it\u2019s about the monster being a mystery and in the shadows.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get on to Aaron. What made you think he\u2019d be right for this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Aaron has a dance background and is incredibly physical and athletic, and I knew that he could do the kind of body work that he does in this film, in collaboration with [movement artist] Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, who worked with Lily on Nosferatu<\/em>. I can\u2019t think of another actor of his caliber who could really do it, with the pathos and pain that this character needed to have, and also a kind of traditional masculinity, while still feeling internally fragile. It\u2019s a balance of a lot of things. His performance is truly harrowing. I\u2019m super proud of what Aaron did. It\u2019s quite extraordinary.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

We see his character as a kid too \u2013 clearly there\u2019s a formative experience going on there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah. We spend a good amount of the film with him as a young man. In the research, some of the historical cases of werewolves were men on trial for doing super-horrific things that they were accused of that were so taboo, and so hard for people to wrap their minds around\u2026 like, they had<\/em> to be werewolves, they couldn\u2019t be human. But some of these guys, it was clear to me \u2013 either explicitly, or reading through the lines \u2013 experienced some pretty severe childhood trauma. I\u2019m not like trying to say, like, trauma or alcoholism or whatever equals a werewolf. But that is something I\u2019m definitely exploring in this movie.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s some hellish religious iconography in the teaser. How does that play into what you\u2019re exploring, and is that one of the reasons you set it in this time period?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s set around 1300, and if you were living in England in 1300, every single part of every of everyday life was through a Catholic lens. That was just how it was. So if we\u2019re setting it in that period, that becomes a baseline for every character and every way of thinking. The reason why it\u2019s set then is because there was a knight and hunter who was bidden by the king to kill all the wolves in England, to protect the wool industry, basically. And this ex-knight\/hunter was so successful that, by Henry VIII\u2019s reign, there were no wolves left in England. So this is the last time that there was any werewolf lore in British history, because once there are no wolves, there are no werewolves for people to be frightened of. I wanted it to be English, so it needed to be this early. But most of the English stuff that is written down from this period was more for the intelligentsia. I needed to turn to the continent to enrich the folklore.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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We did a post-process that makes everyone\u2019s skin tones look extra wrecked.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

What can you say about who Willem Defoe is playing? You keep coming back to him, but every time he plays someone completely different \u2013 he\u2019s not doing the same shtick.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, but he always plays someone in my movies who loves what they do (laughs<\/em>). He\u2019s an antagonist [here], and he might be inspired by that guy I was just talking about.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly this is a very different role for Lily after Nosferatu<\/em>. She did some very physically challenging work in that film \u2013 what did you ask of her this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

There were things about [Nosferatu<\/em>\u2019s] Ellen that were particularly challenging in a way that this character wasn\u2019t, but also this character is so far from Lily, physically and in her general way of holding herself. So to be this mediaeval farmer\u2019s wife, this mother who is super grounded, was a challenge which she embraced and was super into. It\u2019s a really remarkable performance, and she\u2019s the heart of the movie, she really is.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

What were you and [cinematographer] Jarin Blaschke going for in terms of the palette of the film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

It has a unique look. The night photography is fairly similar to what we\u2019ve been doing in moonlight [in other films], but\u2026  this was shot on colour film, and it\u2019s very desaturated. We also did an orthochromatic post-process that makes everyone\u2019s skin tones look extra wrecked. And we found a way to give it the grain structure of black-and-white film. So it\u2019s a very textured and dirty look, but also detailed. Which should make the gruesome, grisly, miserable, horrible, no-good, very-bad mediaeval world even nastier and smellier than it ever could be.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re not smelling all the shit, then you\u2019re not experiencing this movie properly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

There are some exquisitely unique looking people in the trailer. Leads aside, is there something specific you were looking for in the casting that would particularly work for this time period?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, very extreme looks. Casting this movie was incredibly fun and rewarding, and at times really difficult. It was definitely the most challenging movie to cast so far. He was a little later, but it needs to feel like Bruegel.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The final shot has Aaron bone-crunching, foaming at the mouth. That\u2019s as much as you give us, werewolf-wise, as it were. For now.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, this is a slow-burn horror that\u2019s about the tension and the anticipation and the mystery and the darkness, and\u2026 we don\u2019t want to give it away. But\u2026 this film is immersive, and needs to be experienced full-immersion, on the big screen. If you\u2019re not smelling all the shit and mud in the street, then you\u2019re not experiencing this movie properly.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope they put that on the poster. I don\u2019t think they will.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Werwulf comes to UK cinemas from January 1, 2027<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He\u2019s given us witches, Vikings, vampires and \u2013 perhaps his biggest monster of all \u2013 Willem Dafoe\u2019s maniacal lighthouse keeper. His films are steeped in folklore, committed to undying (or undead) detail in the name of convincingly nightmarish experiences \u2013 so of all people, we can trust Robert Eggers to do right by lycanthropes. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11181,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11179\/revisions\/11181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}