The attraction that comes from Count Orlok on Nosferatu more than skin-deep decay. And this is by design director Robert Eggerswho talks about his choices to move away from the Max Schreck classic Nosferatu look modern sexy vampires.

“The most admired contemporary vampire, Edward Cullen from twilightIt’s not scary at all,” Eggers said Gold Derby. “So I want to go back to the story because the first Balkan and Slavic vampire lore was written by or about people who believed there were vampires and were afraid of them. So clearly, there is something scary there. And these first human vampires looked like rotting corpses—just as we think of zombies in contemporary cinema. So that’s an exciting theory. “

The last person to play a hot rotting corpse, funnily enough, also played NosferatuHuman love interest—remember Nicholas Hoult Hot Bodies? Here, he’s just Thomas Hutter: regular man embraced by the power of centuries of decaying rizz.

What can we say? That mustachioed Bill Skarsgård really does it for us Transylvanian protectors Tom Selleck, completely changing our expectations of what a vampire looks and sounds like. In the same interview, Eggers continued, “Facial hair, not everyone is a fan. But it is, in my opinion, important… if you look at the pictures of the noble Transylvanians, if you find the one without a mustache, let me know. I thought he had one. But, you know, Vlad the Impaler has a mustache that Eastern European facial hair. So I feel like it helps him fit into that world more than anything else. It’s historically accurate, really.

The movie is total gothic horror edging in its inevitable culmination of an overly dramatic dead Transylvanian nobleman—who has a penchant for making life hell for everyone around the object of his affection if he doesn’t get his way. Skarsgård shared with Esquire that the show “takes its evil” and that “it’s like creating pure evil. It took me a while to shake the demon inside of me.”

Thank the horror gods, Bill is a freak and has made himself one of the best character actors on screen, proving that vampires can still be creepy without the shiny breasts or the delicious gold. locks of his brother Alexander, who plays the vampire Eric. True Blood.

“It plays with a sexual fetish about the power of the monster and what attracts you,” said Bill Skarsgård about his look at Orlok. “Hopefully you’ll be a little fascinated by it and pissed off by your fascination at the same time.” And with Anne Rice, I swear she and Eggers did it. The gross, swamp rat-festing Lestat (both of them) looks like a cute chibi character compared to Skarsgård. He is even hypnotically powerful. Seriously, the magic? Bill surpassed Ralph Ineson’s tenor intonation in a movie starring Ralph Ineson with a deep loins-shaking operatic voice. How do you explain the somatic trances that Lily-Rose Depp does as Ellen Hutter?

Orlok is an appetite indeed. It’s okay, if you squint hard enough Skarsgård’s eyes poke through the messy side-swoop of his infectiously scabbing face. We know why Ellen died, the beautiful wonder that the mutual destruction of beauty and the beast depended on. A tale as old as time.

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