10 Robert Eggers Movie Scenes That Prove He’s a Modern Master of Horror

Robert Eggers
is a master of horror who has proven time and time again his ability to masterfully create terrifying scenes. He first debuted in the A24 horror film in 2015. Witchthe visionary director has quickly earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest contemporary voices in the genre. The follow-up to his folk horror masterpiece comes a Lovecraftian thrill ride. Lighthouse and a Viking Age revenge film Northerner, Eggers continues to deliver truly disturbing sequences.

Compared to most horror directors, Robert Eggers’ best films manage to do a lot with very little. Without showing too many outright horrific images, Eggers is able to raise screams through his brilliant direction alone, using breathtaking performances and chilling cinematography to convey an unmistakable sense of fear and dread. Hopefully the upcoming Eggers Nosferatu the remake could continue to add more terrifying moments to his filmography.

10

Sam goes missing

The iconic moment was in “The Witch”

One of the most exciting episodes in Witch this is the inciting incident of the film. After being exiled with her family from the local pilgrim community and forced to live in a dangerous homestead in some isolated forest, teenage girl Thomasin plays with her little brother Sam on the street.

Thomasin plays peek-a-boo with his brother, covering his face and revealing it to surprise him with delight. But when Thomasin opens her eyes moments later, her joy turns to horror when she discovers that her brother has disappeared.

Even worse, Thomasin (and by extension the audience) gives a brief glimpse of the plant life ahead of her, leading into the forest, returning to the spot, implying that some creature disturbed her, escaping with Sam at inhuman speed. As brief as this scene is, it sets an unsettling tone for the rest of The Witch.

9

Thomas decides to live deliciously

The iconic moment was in “The Witch”

Witch is indeed filled with two of its most terrifying scenes: Thomasin’s eventual acceptance of the diabolical influence plaguing her family is as terrifying as her initial loss of Sam. The entire film is haunted by the presence of the mysterious goat Black Phillip. Witchbeing the object of obsession for Thomasin’s younger siblings.. After her family is nearly destroyed, Thomasin approaches the goat only to find out that he is none other than the Devil himself.

In a bone-chilling whisper, Black Philip begs Thomasin to hand over her life to him, asking if that’s what she wants.life is delicious” Philip’s human face remains out of sight as he gently leads her by the hand, prompting Thomasin to finally succumb to his influence and join his coven of witches. When Thomasin joins her new group of sisters, she is overcome with hysterical laughter as she rises into the air, marking the end of her troubling path to profanity.

8

Winslow discovers that he is in the lighthouse

A significant moment occurred in Mayak

For so many haunting moments like Lighthouse capable of imagining, the film ironically leaves the viewer in the dark in many ways. Throughout the film, Eggers gives very few concrete answers about the nature of the madness that has engulfed the small outpost lost at sea. When Robert Pattinson’s Winslow finally seeks out the lighthouse’s secrets for himself, he soon discovers that the answers come with a fate worse than death.

Looking at the ominous lighthouse, the audience’s senses are captured by the blinding light and roaring sounds as Winslow succumbs to the lighthouse’s influence. Even if the film never directly shows what exactly he saw in the glass container of light, the gradual transformation of his face from hysterical laughter to intense pain almost makes the viewer grateful for this fact. When Winslow comes to, he faces a grisly end: lying naked on the beach with his eyes and guts pecked out by seagulls, fulfilling the warnings from Willem Dafoe’s Awakenings.

7

Amleth fights a Viking zombie

An iconic moment occurred in the film “Northman”

As good as Robert Eggers is at inciting deep psychological horror with little overt blood and gore, he’s just as capable of directing a creepy encounter with a generic supernatural being. Northerner It’s not exactly a horror film, but some of the visions of the warrior protagonist Amleth, which may or may not be real, border on horror territory in their intensity. The most obvious of these is his encounter with the draugr, a zombie warrior from Norse mythology also known as the Barrow Dweller.

The soothsayer said that he would need a special blade pulled from the moonlight to have any hope of defeating his evil uncle, Amleth enters the grave to retrieve the sword from its original owner. At the same time, he has to fight a corpse that comes to life in his presence. The creature makeup effects and hissing sound design are top-notch, and the way the scene ends suggests that the undead may have entered Almet’s mind.

6

Village Raid

An iconic moment occurred in the film “Northman”

For the most part, Robert Eggers chooses to base his horror on more fantastical, supernatural, or folkloric elements, with little concern for depicting real-world horrors. The only exception is his chilling direction of the berserker raid scene in Northerner, which describes a type of fear that was once very real for many people living during the Viking Age. After the timeskip, Eggers reveals that Almet survived as a berserker in a band of Vikings pillaging villages throughout the countryside to survive.

The violence in this powerful scene is some of the worst in Eggers’ filmography. Even if this is more of a war film than an outright horror film, this scene fails to convey just how disgusting the Vikings’ actions were, from the screams of the mourning village women as they were taken advantage of by the invaders, to the fasting. – the combat trembling of exhausted berserkers descending from the peak of adrenaline. It is disturbing to remember that similar scenes have actually been experienced by many innocent people throughout history.

5

You love me, lobster, don’t you?

A significant moment occurred in Mayak

Unlike the carnage depicted in The Northman, The Lighthouse is able to convey desperately frightening horror with alarmingly little means. The psychological pressure of hostility that builds between Wake and Winslow as a result of their confinement with each other in such an isolated place finally reaches a boiling point at one point in the film, arising from an initially humorous argument. When Winslow neglects Wake’s cooking, even his famous lobster, Willem Dafoe’s character has enough and launches into a long monologue in which he curses his companion with the power of the sea itself.

Even if all that actually happens in this scene is the old man yelling at his co-worker, Eggers manages to turn this moment into one of the most chilling sequences of his career. The bright, low-angle black-and-white lighting makes Willem Dafoe’s face a mile wide as he spits vitriol at Winslow and shouts:Listen!” to highlight his condemnation and evoke so much obvious fear with just the performance. It would be no surprise that Eggers would be working with Dafoe again in the cast Nosferatu.

4

The witch kills Sam

The iconic moment was in The Witch.

Like Lighthouse, some of the most frightening moments Witch made even scarier by what they choose not to show. That said, when it comes time for the film to frankly depict horrific atrocities, it pulls no punches, with some of the most disturbing imagery ever seen in a mainstream horror film. The creepiest and most upsetting scene, which does not hide anything behind the scenes, occurs at the very beginning, when it is revealed what exactly the Witch wanted from Thomasin’s little brother, Sam.

An exhausted old woman, the Witch first runs her hands over baby Sam’s young body, trembling with excitement. She proceeds to stuff the poor baby into a churn, turning him into a bloody paste, which she then applies to her skin in a sort of painful ritual that seems to restore her youth, as seen in her next encounter with Caleb. Eggers avoids showing all the grisly details of this murky skincare routine, but shows just enough to create a sickening scene that’s hard to even watch.

3

Winslow finds a mermaid

A significant moment occurred in Mayak

Like all the best horror directors, Eggers doesn’t shy away from sexual themes in his work. Most Lighthouse revolves around phallic imagery, sexual frustration and dominance-submission relationships, all packed into the pressure cooker of two hot-tempered workers confined to a small space for months. In his insatiable sexual psychosis, Winslow invents a companion for himself – an eerily beautiful mermaid.

In a dizzyingly edited scene, Winslow encounters a mermaid half-buried in seaweed dug up on the shore. His lust for the creature is interrupted when she awakens, giving him a terrifying smile and piercing his ears with a haunting scream. Mermaid actress Valeria Karaman deserves more credit for making this jarring pacing so frustrating, her jerking, inhuman movements as Winslow runs away hard to forget. Interestingly, Anya Taylor-Joy applied for the role of the mermaid, but Eggers turned her down.

2

Winslow fights Wake

A significant moment occurred in Mayak

Winslow’s encounter with the mermaid isn’t the only time his shaky sanity and overactive imagination get the better of him while he’s trapped in the lighthouse. Whether the film’s more supernatural imagery is real or not is still up to interpretation, but there’s no doubting how effective Eggers is at creating inhuman monsters. This is also demonstrated when Winslow and Wake fight for dominance one last time.

As guilt over his past overshadows his present, Winslow presents Wake as many different beings. Wake changes between being the real Efarim Winslow, the mermaid from Winslow’s earlier visions and finally a screaming, shape-shifting sea god full of writhing tentacles that nearly destroys “Winslow”. The make-up and special effects of the sudden immersion in fantasy are brilliantly combined with Dafoe’s screams, conjuring up images of the true wrath of the sea.

1

Caleb is bewitched

The iconic moment was in “The Witch”

Industry veterans like Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson aren’t the only actors Robert Eggers can pull off horrifyingly disgusting performances. Witch demonstrates just how strong Eggers is as a children’s director, making impressively young children like the Mercy twins and Jonas’ cast speak convincingly in Old English while still feeling natural. However, it was Caleb Harvey Scrimshaw who received Best Horror Directing, making him the best child actor in a horror film ever.

Returning to his meager homestead after his encounter with the Witch, Caleb is cursed, writhing in pain and foaming at the mouth, shouting blood-curdling religious prayers. His violent convulsions are punctuated by the vomiting of an entire apple, shortly after which he dies, driven to a hysterical state of religious fanaticism by his encounter with the supernatural. For his power over actors of any age, Robert Eggers more than deserves his recognition as a visionary of horror.