PETA Is Going To Protest a ‘Nosferatu’ Screening Due To the Film Depicting Rats as the ‘Harbingers of Death’

Nosferatu had its world premiere in Berlin on December 2, 2024. The film is scheduled to be released in the United States on December 25, 2024. It received positive reviews from critics.

On Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 67 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.30/10. The website’s consensus reads: “Marvelously orchestrated by director Robert Eggers, Nosferatu is a behemoth of a horror film that is equal parts repulsive and seductive.” Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 83 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating “universal acclaim“.

But, it seems that not everyone is happy with the movie as PETA plans to protest the Academy screening of director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu this Sunday.

The animal rights group is sending someone dressed as a “giant rat” to the Samuel Goldwyn Theater to speak out against the use of 5,000 live rats in a scene where they invade London, symbolizing the spread of the bubonic plague.

Lauren Thomasson, PETA’s director for animals in film and TV, said in a statement, “Rats are no more dangerous to humans in real life than vampires are. Misrepresenting them as bringers of death robs audiences of the chance to see them as smart, social, and loving creatures.

The real problem on set is directors who expose animals to stressful and chaotic environments. PETA calls on people to reject these harmful stereotypes and treat rats with the respect they deserve.”

After an early public screening of the film, Eggers talked about the scene during a chat with Guillermo del Toro. He said, “If there’s rats in the foreground, they’re real, and then they thin out and become CG rats in the background. And they were well-trained. I didn’t know that rats are incontinent, so the smell is insane.”

Production designer Craig Lathrop also added, “The rats. None of them were lost. We found all of them. They were all there. We built these plexiglass barriers so that the live rats would be in a controlled area. In the scene on the street, the horses are on one side of the plexiglass barrier, and the rats are on the other, so that the rats wouldn’t run underneath their feet and get squashed, so nobody would get hurt.”

PETA highlights that rats are social animals who bond closely with their families and friends, enjoy playing and wrestling, and even laugh when tickled. They also note that rats are less likely than dogs or cats to spread parasites or viruses.

Nosferatu is a remake of the 1922 German film, which was, in turn, based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. The film stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, and Willem Dafoe.

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