Robert Eggers’ cinema feels less like a filmography and more like a seance. From the puritan dread of The Witch to the mythic madness of The Lighthouse and the operatic brutality of The Northman, Eggers has carved out a singular space where history, folklore, and psychological terror collapse into one beautiful frame. Now, with Werwulf, the director’s ongoing love affair with gothic darkness enters its most primal phase.

Amid the howling shadows of this new project, one young talent is quietly finding her footing. Bodhi Rae Breathnach, a rising Irish-English actress, is stepping into the Eggers universe.

Deadline reported that Bodhi Rae Breathnach will take on a supporting role in Robert Eggers’ latest feature Werwulf. The 14-year-old actress joins an imposing cast led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Ralph Ineson, making the project one of the most stacked genre line-ups in recent memory. Backed by Focus Features, the film marks another collaboration between Eggers and several of his trusted performers.

With Dafoe and Ineson having previously delivered iconic turns in The Witch and The Lighthouse, and Taylor-Johnson and Depp reuniting with the director after Nosferatu. For Breathnach, the casting represents a significant career inflection point.

Breathnach made her feature debut in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, the much-discussed Oscar hopeful adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, where she portrayed Susanna, the daughter of William Shakespeare. The performance positioned her as a young actor with emotional range and period sensibility, qualities that align seamlessly with Eggers’ meticulous historical aesthetic. As she is set to star in Werwulf (via Deadline), Breathnach is also set to appear opposite Jason Statham in the action-thriller Shelter, directed by Ric Roman Waugh.

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As the ensemble seems nothing less than perfect, what exactly is Werwulf about, and why is it shaping up to be Robert Eggers’ most ambitious horror project yet?

Werwulf began filming in the UK in the fall of 2025 and is set in 13th-century England, a time when superstition was not a metaphor; it was survival. The story follows a mysterious creature stalking rural communities, as local folklore gradually manifests into a living nightmare. True to Robert Eggers’ style, the film is expected to blend historical authenticity with psychological horror, grounding the supernatural in cultural terror rather than spectacle alone.

The film is currently slated for a late December 2026 release, positioning it as a potential prestige horror event. Eggers has described the project as one of his darkest to date, leaning heavily into archaic language, medieval theology, and the animalistic fear embedded in early European myth. If The Witch was about religious paranoia and The Northman about inherited violence, Werwulf appears poised to explore humanity’s most ancient anxiety: the beast within.

With a director at the height of his creative powers and a new generation of talent stepping into his carefully constructed nightmares, Werwulf feels less like a film and more like an inevitable cultural moment.

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