Werwulf director Robert Eggers has called the medievel monster movie “the darkest thing I have ever written,” and it doesn't sound like he was exaggerating.
The film has now been officially rated R for “strong bloody/disturbing violent content, gore, sexual assault, graphic nudity and strong sexual content.”
Aaron Taylor-Johnson's fully transformed "wolf man" was not revealed in the recent trailer, and likely won't be unveiled until audiences are sitting down to watch the movie in theaters this Christmas.
Werwulf also stars Lily-Rose Depp as Johnson's character's loyal wife, and Willem Dafoe as a hunter who comes to the village to investigate the tales of a murderous beast stalking the land.
"For me, going back to the old folklore is a way in, because you’re going to find different stuff – the tropes aren’t the same tropes that are so tired that they’ve become clichés," Eggers explained in a recent interview with Empire. "So that in and of itself gives it some freshness. I’ve also struggled with the creature, because it’s difficult in monster movies to make the monster convincing. I think that’s another pitfall of werewolf movies – 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 – and monster movies – of all time, is the first Alien, where it’s about the monster being a mystery and in the shadows.
"He's a farmer," Eggers said of Johnson's character during a separate interview with Esquire. "He's a man who is cursed. It's a story about a man who is cursed and is trying to find salvation through love. He's a character who is haunted and in great pain. Nobody has a name in the movie. Aside from a dog. [Laughs.]"
Eggers was careful not to give away too much about the story, but he did reveal that Werwulf won't include the usual tropes associated with the werewolf myth.
"Backpedaling away from influences and mythologies that do and don't have to do with the film, the cool thing about going back into the past is that you can kind of hit a reset button. So, all the clichés of being bitten by a werewolf and silver bullets and a lot of the stuff that has become almost campy doesn't exist in the mythology of this movie. So you don't need to have seen Lon Cheney Jr.'s The Wolf Man or An American Werewolf in London to get what's going on here."
The filmmaker also revealed that Depp's character is the "heart of the movie."
"Lily is truly transformative. There's a very clear physical change in her body and her makeup, but she inhabits a very different person that's very different from her and very different from any character she's ever played. She's Aaron's wife, and she's a mother of several children and also a farmer. She’s sort of the most gracious person in the film."
"In 13th-century England, a mysterious creature stalks a foggy countryside as local folklore becomes a terrifying reality for the villagers.”