As a rumour emerges that Christopher Nolan might be making a vampire horror next, we look at some unsettling moments from his earlier work.
The success of Oppenheimer was so unexpectedly huge that, if Christopher Nolan were to walk into a studio with a script about the making of decorative wall plates, executives would sign a cheque without asking too many questions.
Instead, one rumour rolling around is that Nolan has some sort of genre film in the works – according to the singularly intense YouTuber Grace Randolph, Nolan’s next project is in a similar “genre space” to movies coming out “in the next couple of months.” When a viewer on Randolph’s live stream asked whether it was some sort of horror film, Randolph replied, “That’s a good guess.”
Since then, Gizmodo/io9's Germain Lussier has seemingly backed up that story, and added a little more to it: according to his “reliable source”, Nolan’s making “a vampire movie set in the 1920s.”
Admittedly, Nolan’s fame is such that he’s been attached to all kinds of movies in the past, and many of those claims have been debunked. His connection to the James Bond franchise feels more like a collective attempt at manifesting than anything based on cold reality; a recent rumour that he’s remaking 1960s TV series The Prisoner as a movie has also been nixed by The Hollywood Reporter. There’s also the claim that he’s about to make some sort of tech thriller inspired by 1983’s Blue Thunder.
As for this recent vampire horror rumour, even Randolph sounds a note of caution, saying that “it would be weird to see Nolan also get into this [genre] space considering some other big-name directors are also playing around there… so put a giant grain of salt on that, okay?”
Certainly, it seems odd that Nolan would embark on a period vampire flick when other high-profile directors are in the process of making something similar: Ryan Coogler has Sinner on the way next year, while Robert Eggers’ similarly toothsome Nosferatu is due out in US cinemas on the 25th December.
Still, Nolan has certainly made comments in recent months that suggest that the horror genre is somewhat on his mind. Speaking at an event at the BFI in February, Nolan said that he “would love” to make a horror film one day, but added that a good film in that genre requires “a really exceptional idea” that he didn’t then have.
Read more: Oppenheimer review | A minor miracle of a movie
“I think horror films are very interesting because they depend on very cinematic devices,” he said. “It’s really about [provoking] a visceral response to things. So at some point, I’d love to make a horror film. But I think a really good horror film requires a really exceptional idea – and those are few and far between. So I haven’t found the story that lends itself to that. But I think it’s a very interesting genre from a cinematic point of view. It’s also one of the few genres where – the studios make a lot of these films – and they’re films that have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction. They have a lot of qualities that Hollywood is generally very resistant to putting into films, but that’s a genre where it’s allowable.”
Could Nolan have stumbled on a horror concept he’s keen to turn into a movie since he said this? Given it’s only a matter of months ago, ‘probably not’ is the short answer. But then again, he once revealed that his sci-fi heist thriller Inception initially began life as a horror concept before he fashioned it into the Bond-esque headtrip released in 2010. Maybe the project he’s making at Universal has gone the other way, and what began in one genre has shifted into horror territory during a rewrite. (All we currently know is that his next film’s being made at Universal, is due out in 2026, while Matt Damon is in talks to star.)
Nolan has, at any rate, dealt in mystery and suspense since the beginning of his career, and while much of his work to date has tended to sit in and around the thriller genre (even his Dark Knight trilogy draws on things like The French Connection and Dirty Harry), he’s also dabbled in horror imagery from time to time.
Other standout jabs of horror from Nolan’s earlier movies include, but are not limited to:
The Dark Knight (2008)
The handheld footage of Heath Ledger’s Joker terrorising a bound victim is truly disturbing. Amid Nolan’s sleek, controlled filmmaking, it’s an unsettling glimpse inside the villain’s chaotic and nihilistic mind.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The production design on The Pit – one of the story’s central locations – provides a possible insight into what a Christopher Nolan horror film could look like. All gloomy cells and interconnecting staircases, it’s like a nightmare combination of MC Escher and German expressionist cinema.
Dunkirk (2017)
In an expansive film that largely takes in wide open spaces, the sequence in which a group of young soldiers find themselves trapped in a boat, its hull riddled with bullets and rapidly taking in water, makes for a strikingly claustrophobic contrast.
Tenet (2020)
Coming as it does after an intensely-paced opening hostage sequence, John David Washington’s railway track torture makes for a powerful tonal shift. Shot with Kubrickan single vanishing point perspective and joined by some screechingly oppressive sound design, its suggestion of violence is more powerful than if Nolan had outright shown what Andrew Howard’s sadistic Stephen was actually doing to Washington’s ‘Protagonist’.
Oppenheimer (2023)
The sequence in which we occupy Cillian Murphy’s titular scientist’s headspace and see the terrible effects of the nuclear bomb is rightly among the drama’s most talked-about. If anything, it’s perhaps more impactful than the earlier Trinity bomb test sequence – the moment when Oppenheimer finally realises the terrifying magnitude of his own invention. When people logged onto social media to talk about their anxiety after seeing the movie, it’s perhaps this scene that most firmly lodged in the back of their minds. It truly is a nightmare.
These are but a few examples of how effective Nolan’s filmmaking could be if it were trained on the horror genre. There are other moments, too: the shadows and fog of Insomnia and The Prestige; the nightmare hallucinations of Batman Begins; that weird moment when Leonardo DiCaprio got stuck in a narrow alleyway in Inception.
There’s no official sign that Nolan really is making a horror film next – his 2026 movie could equally be about the making of decorative wall plates. But if he were to bring all his shadowy, reality-twisting skills to bear on the genre, the results would surely be nothing short of fascinating. Great filmmakers of previous generations tried their hand at horror in the genre’s 1960s and 70s boom – Roman Polanski, William Friedkin, Brian De Palma. (Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining would have joined those if he hadn’t spent so long making it.)
Horror is arguably going through a similar boom period in the 2020s; its possible – just about – that Nolan’s taken note, and begun thinking about moving into even darker territory himself.