There’s something about Robert Eggers’ films that gets under your skin and stays there, like splinters from an ancient wooden stake. In just four features, this obsessive director has carved out a unique territory in modern horror cinema, blending historical research with psychological torment that is clearly intended to leave lasting scars on any psyche.
Today, I’m looking at Eggers’ filmography, ranking his four feature films from least favorite to most haunting. This isn’t about which films are “bad” versus “good” – they’re all compelling in their own ways. Rather, this is about which ones have embedded themselves most deeply in my consciousness, refusing to let go long after the credits rolled.
4. The Northman (2022): Epic Ambition meets Mythic Revenge
Synopsis: “The Northman” tells the story of Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård), a Viking prince whose father (Ethan Hawke) is murdered by his uncle. Escaping death himself, Amleth vows revenge, eventually infiltrating his uncle’s settlement in Iceland where he discovers his mother (Nicole Kidman) has married his father’s killer. Working alongside a slave named Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), Amleth pursues his blood-soaked vengeance while supernatural elements from Norse mythology bleed into his reality.
With its $70-90 million budget and star-studded cast including Skarsgård, Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, and Willem Dafoe, “The Northman” represented Eggers’ most ambitious swing. Shot across Northern Ireland and Iceland during the pandemic, the film draws directly from the legend of Amleth, which later inspired Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
The film received strong critical praise (90% on Rotten Tomatoes), yet underperformed financially in theaters, grossing $69.6 million worldwide before finding additional life through VOD and home media.
My Take: “The Northman” stands as Eggers’ most accessible work – which might explain why it lands at the bottom of this list. The problem isn’t that it’s bad; quite the opposite. It’s a stunning achievement of historical action-horror that balances brutal violence with mystical elements. But in expanding his canvas to an epic scale, something of Eggers’ claustrophobic intensity gets diluted.
This films fascinates because you are essentially watching an uncompromising auteur attempting to navigate bigger-budget studio filmmaking without sacrificing his vision. The result is a film caught between worlds – too weird and deliberately paced for mainstream audiences seeking a straightforward Viking action flick, yet too straightforward in its revenge narrative compared to the psychological labyrinths of his other works.
For me, the film’s greatest strengths emerge in its hallucinatory sequences – Amleth’s vision quest with the Seeress, the Valkyrie ride to Valhalla, and the naked sword fight atop an active volcano. These moments capture Eggers at his most visually inventive, blending folklore and nightmare in ways that transcend typical genre fare.
What keeps “The Northman” at number four isn’t its quality but its relative familiarity. While the other films on this list feel wholly unique, “The Northman” occasionally slips into recognizable revenge-movie territory, even as its exceptional craftsmanship elevates the material. It’s a remarkable achievement that simply doesn’t haunt me the way his other films do.
3. The Lighthouse (2019): Madness in Black and White
Synopsis: Two lighthouse keepers, the veteran Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and newcomer Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson), arrive on a remote New England island in the 1890s to maintain the lighthouse for a four-week shift. As a fierce storm strands them beyond their scheduled departure, paranoia, hallucinations, and madness gradually consume both men. Their deteriorating mental states blur the line between reality and delusion, culminating in an explosive confrontation.
Shot in striking black-and-white with an unusual 1.19:1 aspect ratio that creates a nearly square frame, “The Lighthouse” premiered at Cannes before A24 released it in October 2019. The film earned $18.3 million against its $11 million budget and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.
My Take: If you’ve ever wondered what a fever dream captured on celluloid might look like, “The Lighthouse” provides your answer. Eggers’ sophomore effort represents his most experimental and unhinged work – a psychosexual pressure cooker where maritime mythology and toxic masculinity collide in claustrophobic quarters.
The film’s visual approach feels like a deliberate creative constraint that paradoxically liberates Eggers. The nearly-square 1.19:1 aspect ratio becomes a prison for the characters and viewers alike, while the black-and-white photography transforms ordinary objects into mythic symbols. Every frame feels like it could hang in a gallery of nightmare art.
What pushes “The Lighthouse” beyond mere technical brilliance is the volcanic chemistry between Dafoe and Pattinson. Their performances transform Eggers’ and his brother Max’s period-accurate dialogue into a grotesque dance of dominance, submission, and shifting power. Dafoe, in particular, delivers a monologue cursing Pattinson that stands as one of cinema’s most memorable verbal assaults.
Ultimately the film’s greatest appeal might be how it sustains ambiguity about what’s actually happening. Are there supernatural forces, possibly Lovecraftian, at work? Is one character manipulating the other? Are both men simply descending into isolation-induced madness? All interpretations remain viable, creating a cinematic Rorschach test that reveals more about the viewer than the viewed.
“The Lighthouse” ranks third not because of any significant flaws, but simply because its deliberately alienating style and narrative ambiguity make it more intellectually stimulating than emotionally devastating. It’s a film I deeply admire while keeping it at arm’s length – much like the relationship between its two protagonists.
2. Nosferatu (2024): Beautiful Decay
Synopsis: A reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic, Eggers’ “Nosferatu” follows Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), a real estate agent who travels to Transylvania to close a deal with the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). Meanwhile, Hutter’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) experiences strange visions connecting her to the count. As Orlok arrives in their German hometown, bringing plague and death, Ellen discovers she may be the only one who can stop the ancient vampire’s reign of terror.
Shot primarily at Barrandov Studios in Prague between February and May 2023, “Nosferatu” finally realized Eggers’ long-gestating passion project, which he had initially planned as his second film. With a $50 million budget and an ensemble cast featuring Skarsgård, Depp, Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Emma Corrin, the film has become Eggers’ highest-grossing work, earning $181.2 million worldwide since its Christmas 2024 release. It garnered four Academy Award nominations for its technical achievements.
My Take: “Nosferatu” represents Eggers’ most beautiful nightmare – a film that finds terrible poetry in decay and disease. Where most modern vampire tales emphasize seduction and glamour, Eggers returns to the horrific roots of the vampire myth: Orlok as pestilence personified, a walking plague that infects everything he touches.
What makes this version unique is Eggers’ characteristic historical immersion. He doesn’t just adapt Murnau’s film or Stoker’s novel; he recreates the genuine folk terror of 19th century Europe, where superstition and science uncomfortably coexisted. The film’s attention to period detail – from the embroidery on cloaks to the recreation of Dacian language spoken in the Carpathian Mountains – creates an almost documentary-like quality to the horror.
Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok deserves special mention. Rather than attempting to outdo Max Schreck’s iconic performance from the 1922 original, Skarsgård finds new dimensions in the character – making him simultaneously repulsive and vulnerable. The film suggests Orlok’s immortality is as much curse as power, creating unexpected moments of sympathy for this ancient predator.
The film’s most effective innovation lies in its expansion of Ellen’s role. Lily-Rose Depp plays a character torn between fascination and revulsion, whose connection to Orlok seems predestined yet not fully understood even by the participants. Their twisted relationship forms the emotional core of the film, elevating it beyond typical horror fare. My only criticism here is that, at times, Depp seems to ham it up, and the melodrama reaches staggering proportions.
“Nosferatu” nearly claims the top spot on this list, held back only by occasional moments where its bigger budget and wider scope slightly dilute the suffocating intimacy that makes Eggers’ best work so disturbing. Nevertheless, it stands as one of the rare reimaginings that honors its source while finding genuinely new terrors within familiar shadows.
1. The Witch (2015): Pure America Nightmare
Synopsis: In 1630s New England, a Puritan family is banished from their settlement and establishes a farm at the edge of a foreboding forest. After their infant son mysteriously vanishes while under teenage daughter Thomasin’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) care, the family begins to unravel amid accusations of witchcraft. As crops fail and paranoia intensifies, something dark from the woods begins infiltrating their lives, testing their faith and family bonds with devastating consequences.
Made on a modest $4 million budget, “The Witch” (stylized as “The VVitch: A New-England Folktale”) premiered at Sundance before A24 released it in February 2016. The film grossed over $40 million worldwide and currently holds a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, establishing Eggers as a significant new voice in horror cinema.
My Take: Nine years after its release, “The Witch” remains not just Eggers’ masterpiece but one of the most perfectly realized horror films ever made. What begins as a historical drama about religious exile slowly transforms into a living nightmare where the monsters from Puritan sermons manifest in terrifying reality.
The film’s genius lies in its absolute commitment to period authenticity as the foundation for its horror. The Early Modern English dialogue, drawn from actual 17th-century documents, doesn’t just sound “old-timey” – it reveals the specific worldview that made witchcraft a plausible, even expected presence in daily life. When supernatural elements emerge, they feel like natural extensions of the world rather than intrusions into it.
Anya Taylor-Joy’s breakthrough performance as Thomasin captures the impossible position of young women in Puritan society, torn between obedience and independence, piety and natural desire. The film becomes a dark coming-of-age story where Thomasin’s options narrow to either accepting patriarchal oppression or embracing something far more dangerous but potentially liberating.
What places “The Witch” at the summit of Eggers’ work is how thoroughly it gets under your skin. The film doesn’t rely on jump scares or graphic violence (though the few violent moments land with devastating impact). Instead, it builds inexorable dread through isolation, religious hysteria, and the gradual realization that the family’s theological worldview might be horrifyingly accurate – just not in the way they expected.
The now-iconic final sequence, where Thomasin is invited to “live deliciously,” offers one of cinema’s most ambiguous endings. Is this liberation or damnation? Triumph or tragedy? The film refuses easy answers, making it endlessly rewatchable as perspectives shift with each viewing.
Nine years and three films later, nothing in Eggers’ impressive filmography has matched the pure distillation of American horror found in “The Witch” – a film that understands our national nightmares are rooted in religious terror, family disintegration, and the wilderness just beyond our tenuous settlements.
Looking Ahead: Werwulf (2026)
After the commercial success of “Nosferatu,” Eggers isn’t straying far from his historical horror comfort zone. His next project, “Werwulf,” announced in January 2025, will tackle werewolf mythology in 13th century England. Co-written with “Northman” collaborator Sjón, the film is scheduled for a December 2026 release through Focus Features, marking Eggers’ fifth collaboration with the studio.
Given Eggers’ pattern of obsessive historical research, we can expect “Werwulf” to draw from medieval werewolf trials and folklore rather than the more familiar Hollywood werewolf traditions established in the 20th century. If his previous work is any indication, Eggers will find fresh terror in ancient fears, continuing his exploration of how supernatural beliefs reflected and amplified the very real horrors of life in earlier eras.
The Eggers Effect
Robert Eggers is undoubtedly a distinctive voice in contemporary cinema. It isn’t just his meticulous research or visual precision – it’s his understanding that true horror emerges from the intersection of historical reality and psychological fragility. His characters don’t just encounter monsters; they confront the monsters their cultures have created and internalized, and these are often greater than the supernatural.
Each Eggers film functions as a time machine that doesn’t just show us how people lived in different eras but how they feared. Whether it’s Puritan anxiety about salvation, Victorian maritime superstitions, Norse fatalism, or 19th-century dread of contagion, Eggers excavates specific historical terrors and makes them feel immediate and universal.
As he continues building his filmography, Eggers has already gained a reputation as an uncompromising visionary whose commercial appeal grows with each project. While “The Witch” remains his most perfectly realized nightmare (at least in my mind), each subsequent film expands his thematic territory while maintaining his obsessive commitment to authenticity as the foundation for effective horror.
In an era of disposable jump-scares and franchise formula, the four films on this list hopefully makes my case that the most effective horror comes not from what temporarily startles us but from what fundamentally disturbs us and lingers – the ancient fears that continue to haunt our supposedly rational modern minds.
“Black Phillip, Black Phillip
A crown grows out his head,
Black Phillip, Black Phillip
To nanny queen is wed.
Jump to the fence post,
Running in the stall.
Black Phillip, Black Phillip
King of all.
Black Phillip, Black Phillip
King of sky and land,
Black Phillip, Black Phillip
King of sea and sand.
We are ye servants,
We are ye men.
Black Phillip eats the lions
From the lions’ den.”
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