Why Nosferatu and Twilight are alike, according to director Robert Eggers

Watch: Nosferatu director Robert Eggers talks sex and desire in his vampire horror remake

In Nosferatu the exploration of desire, sex and shame are central to the experience of Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) as an object of obsession for vampire Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), an idea director Robert Eggers feels the film shares with other films of the genre including, surprisingly, Twilight.

"I think that attraction and repulsion, the obsession with death and sex and the lust for both of those things, is in the original film," the director tells Yahoo UK, reflecting on his adaptation of FW Murnau's original 1922 silent film.

"It's interesting that as much as Ellen seems repulsed by Orlok even in the Murnau film there is some sense of sensuality or eroticism, even if it's unconscious by her character in that — and so this was something to explore further in my version.

"But it's always there in the vampire folklore. I mean, some early vampires didn't drink blood they just fornicated with their widows until they died from over-fornication. I think that is maybe the lasting power of the vampire — even in Twilight, which is somehow very innocent, [that's] really what it's about, you know?"

Eggers was keen to return to the Romanian folklore of vampires for Nosferatu though, adding that early recorded cases of vampirism is very different to how the public view the figure now: "They are walking corpses, they're not handsome, suave, pale men in dinner jackets, they are quite horrible looking."

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Depp felt the film's exploration of female desire through Ellen's push-pull relationship to Orlok was particularly intriguing to explore in the story, particularly as it allowed her and the writers to examine the notion of shame too often instilled on women.

"I think that's definitely a theme that we're touching on for sure," Depp tells Yahoo UK. "The relationship between desire, specifically female desire at that time period, and shame, and darkness is very apparent because I think shame is something that women were made to feel a lot, especially at that time.

"Especially around all things desire, and thinking about what it is you might really want especially when it comes to a darker realm. Women at the time were really set on a path to be one thing, and if you stray from that at all you were kind of looked down upon.

"So I think that's a theme that we're absolutely exploring when it comes to what you really want and what it is that you think you're supposed to want, and how you kind of come to terms with that internally."

Nosferatu premieres in UK cinemas on New Year's Day.