Robert Eggers has made one hell of a name for himself. With 2015’s The Witch, the director brought stark, sinister satanism back to the world of horror. With 2019’s The Lighthouse, he turned Robert “Sparkly Vampire” Pattinson into an indie film icon. Now, the first trailer for his historical Viking epic The Northman has dropped, and holy shit, the dude is going hard as hell with this one.
As you’ll see in the trailer below, The Northman stars Alexander Skarsgård as a Viking prince whose kingdom is stolen from him by his uncle. In response, he dedicates his entire life to vengeance, and ends up teaming up with a powerful woman (Anya Taylor-Joy, who played the protagonist of The Witch and has risen to fame in The Queen’s Gambit) in order to enact his bloody revenge. Also appearing in the film are Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke, and experimental musician Bjork as a Viking witch.
Check out the trailer for The Northman below:
Even if metalheads weren’t already destined to watch and love The Northman due to its epic Viking action, they’d be forever in debt to Eggers. The Witch was hugely influential to heavy metal culture after it dropped in 2015, landing at #16 on The Pit’s list of the horror movies that most influenced heavy metal music and culture.
“It’s amazing to see how quickly The VVitch imprinted itself onto pop culture,” wrote The Pit’s own Chris Krovatin. “The image of the shaggy goat and the invitation to live deliciously went from mind-bending moments in a quiet period film to satanic symbols and catchphrases for any rebellious person wearing only black. With his subdued story of blasphemy and temptation, director Robert Eggers reinvigorated the world’s interest in functional, graceful Satanism, driving more and more people to heavy metal with renewed visions of how the genre could exist and look. Six years later, it’s all going to Hell. In a good way.”
