Nosferatu’s resurrection has been a long time coming

How is that?

One example is that early vampires from the Balkan and Slavic traditions did not often drink blood. They would strangle their victims or commit adultery with their victims to death. If they drink blood, it is often from the chest. It was this story of obsession and love. It seemed like, well, visually it seemed like a nice poetic idea.

But then I was also thinking about where this folklore comes from. They are people who suffer from sleep paralysis, where they experience a waking nightmare of visiting vampires. They have this pressure on their chest. So it’s also kind of grounded in reality, although the piercing of the sternum with the vampire’s teeth is ridiculous. So it was fun to explore those kinds of things that would kind of keep it fresh, but also felt like it could be integrated into that world.

Was most of this film done with practical effects?

I mean there’s a lot of CG effects in the movie, but you’re trying to do all the big crazy things that are usually done with CG in practice. This way you can use CG to fix and expand things, and you’ll be less aware of the trickery because you’re not looking for what looks fake, because things that are usually fake are real.

I ask because I work at WIRED, and I… Think about artificial intelligence a lot. In filmmaking, there’s a lot of talk about “AI can do this, AI can do that,” but I look at your films and I don’t think AI can do that. What else do you think about these things?

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that AI’s greatest achievement is making “The screensavers are almost convincing“That’s fair. I think AI is best used to inspire humans to do more humane things. So that’s all I have to say about that.”

I know we’re running out of time, but I have to ask: What monsters will you deal with next?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I mean I would love to see a Robert Eggers movie about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Maybe I should delete this joke, because it’ll probably get everywhere.

I mean, I already have Spongebob has been getting a lot of press lately.