Aaron Taylor-Johnson is becoming the monster in the new trailer for Werwulf, Robert Eggers’ medieval horror film. The actor appears exhausted, hunted, and increasingly changed as the footage moves from a dead wolf in the forest to violent flashes of a body that no longer looks human.
Eggers does not give away the completed creature. The trailer builds around fear, physical pain, and the suspicion spreading through an isolated settlement. It sells the transformation without turning the film’s biggest image into a thumbnail.
What does the new Werwulf trailer show?
The footage follows Taylor-Johnson’s character through dense woods and a bleak medieval village. He stands over a huge wolf, carries a spear, and later struggles to move while people gather around fires and rituals. The editing keeps cutting between an animal threat outside the settlement and something changing inside a human body.
The setting is unmistakably Eggers: mud, rough clothing, candlelight, old beliefs, and people who look as if winter has already beaten them down. It is closer to the historical dread of The Witch and The Northman than a polished modern werewolf movie.
How much of the transformation is revealed?
Only pieces. The trailer shows strained hands, damaged skin, contorted movement, and a face hidden at the moment viewers would expect a clean reveal. Taylor-Johnson’s hair, beard, heavy clothing, and increasingly feral movement do most of the work before the effects take over.
That restraint makes the final form harder to read. The wolf carcass proves the movie is not avoiding the animal side of the story, but the trailer never gives a bright, uninterrupted look at the creature Taylor-Johnson may become. Viewers are being asked to imagine the missing stages.
Who is in Werwulf?
Aaron Taylor-Johnson leads the film with Willem Dafoe and Lily-Rose Depp. It reunites all three with Eggers after Nosferatu, although Focus Features has not published their character names on the movie’s official page.
Eggers directs and co-wrote the screenplay with Sjón, his collaborator on The Northman. Eggers, Sjón, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Garrett Bird are listed as producers.
When does Werwulf open?
Werwulf opens in theaters on December 25, 2026. Focus Features has not announced a streaming date. Releasing a grim werewolf movie on Christmas Day is an aggressive choice, but the new trailer makes the pitch clear: this is historical body horror built for a dark theater.
The creature is still hidden, Taylor-Johnson looks ready to tear through the role, and Eggers is returning to the kind of fear that made his earlier films difficult to shake. Do you want the next trailer to show the full werwulf, or should the movie save it for opening night?
