Nosferatu

All I want for Christmas is a remake of a 1920s German gothic vampire film? The official trailer for Nosferatu opens with the sound of a music box in time with a ticking clock, as we slowly zoom out from a shot of a wide-eyed Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) falling backward in slow motion. As Ellen lands on her back at 0:06 there’s a deep impact sound that also evokes thunder. At 0:08 the melody is picked up by an expressive instrument reminiscent of a theremin.

A crescendo of creaking and crunching sound effects brings us to 0:15 when two pairs of eyes open on screen. When Ellen awakens, all other sound stops so that all we hear is her breathing. From 0:20 a single low note drones in the strings as she begins describing her visions to horror fixture Willem Dafoe as Professor von Franz. At 0:33, as we begin to see what Ellen sees in her visions, we hear the sound of slow dripping synched to the Focus Features logo appearing on screen. There are now increasing layers in the sound design, muffled distant screams and creaking furniture.

Ellen describes the part of her vision where everyone is dead, and from 0:45 to 1:03 there are many layers of aleatoric orchestral strings, all playing rising and falling lines out of key with each other, creating a very unsettling texture. The music cuts out entirely at 1:03 as Ellen gets to the part of her vision where she stands face-to-face with death.

She finishes describing her vision, and at 1:08, a new musical texture begins, again with low strings, but this time playing a slow single repeated note using the col legno technique (where the string player uses the wood of their bow). The col legno strings here also evoke the tempo and tone of a ticking clock. The voiceover is now Professor von Franz, describing the vampire Nosferatu. We also hear the return of the three note melody on theremin - it enters at 1:10, synched to the director’s name arriving on screen.

The music and sound design begin to broaden at 1:19 as we see torch-carrying villagers in the woods at night: low strings reference the three note melody we’ve been hearing on theremin, and there are layers of vocals, some are moaning and some are reversed recordings of voices.

We shift gears at 1:34, cutting first to silence so we can hear a prisoner in a cell tell us that “he is coming.” The music gets more intense now, with tremolo low strings (from 1:37) and rising passages on high strings (from 1:39) and pounding large drums (from 1:43). From 1:40-2:05 we have the most active shots in this trailer, with images of violence, sex, rats and the occult. Added to the music mix from 1:52 we have aleatoric strings again to add an additional layer of tension and intensity.

We close with a scene where Ellen waits for the vampire to walk in from her balcony at night (beginning at 2:04), and all we hear are the sounds of wind, distant screams, and a rising orchestral chord that cuts to the expected end-of-trailer sudden silence at 2:18. One more aleatoric riser comes in at 2:19 with soaring vocals and crunching sound design as we see the title card for Nosferatu.

December 25th in theatres - look out: Nosferatu is coming!

— Jack Hui Litster