New Nosferatu perfume to answer: 'What does a vampire smell like?'

You know what really brings all the nubile maidens to the yard? The smell of death and decay. This winter, you too can smell like Nosferatu the Vampyre with “Nosferatu,” a new movie tie-in scent from Focus Features and fragrance company Heretic Parfum. Nice!

According to a press release, perfumer Douglas Little did some historical research and watched the film early (something this writer is trying really hard to be normal about) to answer one simple question: “What does a vampire smell like?” Luckily for any cinephile partners, roommates, and friends out there, his answer was a little sweeter than ours might have been. While this writer probably would have gone with “essence of mold with an undertone of rot and hints of worm,” he describes the perfume as an “eau de macabre… with top notes of lilac and ambrette seed that fall into a heart chord of violet, orris root and petrichor. The mysterious dry-down is woven around vegan ambergris and Oud absolute.” Ambergris is apparently a “solid waxy substance originating in the intestine of the sperm whale,” so at least there’s something hinting at grotesquerie here, but it’s hard to imagine the real Nosferatu would approve of anything being vegan.

In May, Bill Skarsgård described his titular character as a “gross… but very sexualized” creature that you might “get a little bit attracted by… and disgusted by your attraction at the same time.” Could you ever put a price on emulating that? Apparently yes, you can: $125. 

Nosferatu isn’t the only movie to go olfactory in recent weeks. Coincidentally, A24’s Heretic (no relation to the above perfumer) will also have a smell-o-vision aspect for tonight only when it opens in select theaters. The Hugh Grant film will smell like blueberries instead of “the uneasy chill of encountering an apparition,” but based on its trailers, that may be even more sinister than the latter. Grab your tickets and get sniffing!