Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

Going into Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau's unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel, Dracula, I tried to keep as open a mind as possible as someone in 2025 watching a silent horror movie from 1922. Originally, the next horror film I was going to review was Poltergeist, but after receiving this suggestion from my very smart cousin, born from the fact that Robert Eggers' critically acclaimed remake was recently unleashed during Christmas, I decided to try something different. My TV doesn't provide many ancient horror films. Occasionally it'll offer some movies from the 1930s-60s, but never have I seen any option from the 20s. Fortunately, YouTube has an abundance of links to Nosferatu, and thanks to a recent upgrade, I now get YouTube on my TV. (Which is a blessing because I can not sit on a chair for two hours watching a movie on my computer. I've tried in the past and realized it just doesn't work for me.) So now my only challenge was selecting the version with the best visual and audio quality.

Back to what I was saying about keeping an open mind. It's not the easiest thing with a movie this ancient. Now don't get me wrong, there's a multitude of old, black and white horror films that I genuinely love. I'll name the ones I can think of off the top of my head: Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Carnival of Souls, The Night of the Hunter, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man. Then there's House on Haunted Hill, which I don't love, but like very much. All this to say I'm not some basic 21st century horror fan who shivers at the sight of black and white. If a horror movie is good, I'm more than willing to pick apart the cobwebs and immerse myself in the beauty of simple, pure storytelling that emphasizes imagination over technology. 

However, Nosferatu came with a disadvantage for me over those aforementioned titles: it was made over a decade prior to the youngest movie (the Invisible Man is 1933), and that entailed the absence of a key ingredient in a quality motion picture: sound. As of this writing, Nosferatu boasts a whopping 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 72 reviews, with an exceptional average rating of 8.9/10, making it one of the highest rated horror films of all time. Sure, many of those 72 reviews were probably written at the time of the film's release, but a good amount likely were written by critics of today, especially those with a fondness for influential vintage cinema. 

Before I descended to the bottom of my pitch-black basement, settled on the couch, and pressed play, I had a clear-eyed feeling I was not going to find myself in the boat with those 70 critics who loved Nosferatu and consider it a masterpiece of horror. After all, what scared audiences back in 1922 is practically forbidden from packing the same punch 103 years later. And the style of acting and filmmaking has changed drastically as well. My job as a critic is to take into account the time period in which a film was made while staying faithful to my honest emotional reaction. As a powerful mentor said before me, "Your emotions always tell the truth." With that said, I would be lying if I said I enjoyed myself all the way through the hour and 33 minutes I sacrificed for this movie, but that doesn't mean I wasn't in awe of some of its undying artistic pleasures. 

Nosferatu is an initially intriguing, thoroughly well-shot love story that pivots languidly into an eerie Gothic nightmare, populated by an assortment of beautiful scenery and unforgettable images, none more frightening and transfixing than the vampiric appearance of Count Orlok. Unfortunately, all the visuals in the world can't rescue this movie from its bland, interchangeable supporting characters, a frustrating refusal of narrative focus, and a bloated 94-minute runtime that couldn't sustain my interest. According to its Wikipedia article, a much leaner 63-minute version exists somewhere. I strongly believe my experience would've been superior had I stumbled upon that one. The subtraction of 30 minutes could've made a world of a difference.

In 1838, in the fictional German town of Wisborg, Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) is a young, optimistic real estate agent tasked by his employer, the creepily eccentric Herr Knock (Alexander Granach), to travel to the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to sell a deserted house across from his own to a nobleman named Count Orlok (Max Schreck). Thomas' wife, Ellen (Greta Schroder), is simultaneously excited for her husband, as this deal will earn the two of them a "tidy sum," and devastated at being left alone for the duration of his trip. To ease her melancholy, Thomas sends Ellen to stay with his best friend, wealthy ship owner Harding (Georg H. Schnell), and Harding's sister, Ruth (Ruth Landshoff), during his absence. 

Stopping for the night at a motel, where everyone reacts with room-silencing fear to the mere mention of the count's name, Thomas finds a book about vampires in his room, initially scoffing at the "silly" concept but taking it with him anyway. Upon arriving at his client's castle, which sits atop a hill, Thomas is greeted by the strange nobleman, who takes an interest in a photo of Ellen and the blood that runs from Thomas' thumb after he cuts himself during dinner. The next morning, Thomas awakens to find two punctures on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitoes. As he explores the castle, he comes across Orlok sleeping in a coffin and realizes he is in fact a vampire. As Thomas races back to Germany, Orlok, who has already signed the papers to purchase the home across from the Hutters', boards a schooner with multiple coffins containing the earth he's required to sleep in as well as diseased rats, which kill every last crewman on board. Arriving in Wisborg, Orlok takes unobtrusive residence in his new home and sets his sights on his new female neighbor, spreading a plague through town in the process that consumes all the citizens one by one. The only way to put an end to Orlok's reign of terror is for a pure-hearted maiden to sacrifice her blood, along with her life, at her own free will. 

Meanwhile, Ellen, who seems to share a telepathic connection with her otherworldly suitor, battles feelings of intense melancholia driven by Thomas' departure, compounded by visions of the vampire menacing her beloved in the night. Also sharing a telepathic link with the powerful count is Knock, who surreptitiously studies occult symbols in his office and is sent to an insane asylum as he eagerly awaits his master's arrival. As for the recent string of deaths in town, the police are clueless as to the cause and issue a mandate for the citizens to stay inside their homes and lock their doors and windows.

For a 94-minute 1922 horror story about a vampire menacing a real estate agent, there's a lot going on in Nosferatu, and neither the screenwriter, Henrik Galeen, nor the director, F.W. Murnau, are able to get much of a handle on these various plot threads. The most emotionally enrapturing aspect of Nosferatu is the love story that transpires at the start. While Thomas is putting on his bowtie in front of his bedroom mirror, smiling the most cheerful, seize-the-day smile, Ellen is outside playing with her cat. Before he runs off to work, Thomas picks Ellen some flowers, and the two embrace. You can feel the love between them. Every time they hug, it feels as if it's going to be their last. Murnau emphasizes the passion between Thomas and Ellen to create a sense of urgency. We fear for Thomas' safety on his trip to Transylvania because we know what he has to lose back home. As for Ellen, it would be easy to dismiss her heartbreak at his departure as melodramatic if it weren't for the brief time spent demonstrating the genuine love between her and Thomas. That makes it easier to sympathize with her. 

While Thomas is away, he writes his wife letters informing her of his safety and telling her not to worry. This appears to be the first and longest time the two have spent apart. Had Galeen limited his screenplay's focus to the Hutters, Nosferatu would have been a much leaner, more intimate, and potentially heartbreaking tragedy. Unfortunately, following Thomas' daring escape from the castle, in which he resourcefully fashions a makeshift rope out of bed sheets and climbs out of an upstairs window, Galeen makes the fatal mistake of shifting focus from his love-struck protagonists to Thomas' visibly insane employer (who, with his white, untidy, "mad professor" hair, bulging eyes, and overzealous smile, resembles a vampire himself) to a group of nondescript shipmen on the Empusa to the clueless police detectives trying in vain to decipher the cause of the recent plague, draining the story of momentum and urgency the same way Orlok drains his victims of their blood. 

The only characters worth writing home about are Thomas and Ellen, which is not to say either is a model of three-dimensional characterization. From the first moving frame, Thomas is shown to be a cheerful and optimistic man bursting with the joy and exuberance of youth and young love, evinced by von Wangenheim's irrepressible smile. (Back in these pre-talkie days of cinema, actors were forced to convey their emotions through unsubtle, exaggerated expressions and gestures, and von Wangenheim was no slouch in this department.) He's deeply in love with Ellen, showering her with hugs and kisses and picking her flowers like a corny teenager with a grade-school crush, and as much as he hates having to leave her in the company of their close friends, he's doing it to earn a living so the two of them can live their best life together. It's a completely admirable and understandable objective. Thomas is also characterized by a degree of childlike naivete and curiosity, laughing off the mere sight of a book about vampirism but throwing it in his bag regardless (which may be more the result of plot necessity than legitimate character-driven decision making).

When he first meets Orlok, Thomas is gripped by a vague feeling of fear at the man's appearance, but that fear increases steeply after he cuts his thumb while slicing bread and Orlok grabs his hand to try to suck the blood out. That night, Thomas reads a rule not to let the shadow of a vampire consume you at midnight, and as the midnight alarm sounds, his paranoia reaches a crescendo and he buries himself under his covers like a petrified little boy. The following morning, after he comes across Orlok sleeping in his coffin, the happy-go-lucky Thomas utterly shatters to pieces, replaced by a permanent expression of outright terror at the realization that evil does in fact exist in this world. 

While it might be a stretch to describe just about any acting performance from the over-the-top era of German Expressionist filmmaking as "impressive," it must be said that von Wangenheim does a fairly good job at making his transition from ridiculously perky to theatrically terrified both stark and convincing. The Thomas who ends the story sobbing over his wife's body is a vastly different person from the Thomas who smiles at himself in the mirror and rides merrily to his latest client's secluded home on horseback. Apart from him, the era-appropriate campy acting in Nosferatu, in addition to the incessant mood music, lends the film an artificially melodramatic tone.

Ellen is defined almost exclusively by her loneliness and melancholia once Thomas commences his trip to Transylvania. The only time we see her smile is in her introductory shot where she's playing with her cat and embracing Thomas. As soon as he announces his leaving, she descends into a helpless puddle of tears, pleading with him not to go, running after him as he approaches his horse, sitting by her lonesome on a beach staring out at the ocean. Ellen isn't shown to have a job, hobby, or any passions or interests outside of her husband's warm, comforting embrace, and the saddest part is that was probably customary for women in that time period. Nonetheless, I sympathized with her loneliness because the romance between her and Thomas is pure, genuine, and affectionately palpable. 

At night during her sleep, Ellen is haunted by premonitions of Orlok tormenting Thomas in his bedroom, provoking her to scream out the latter's name (though oddly, she always screams "Hutter" instead of "Thomas." Did wives often refer to their husbands by their surname rather than their first?) It's apparent that Ellen shares some type of psychic connection with this vampire, but Galeen doesn't provide any explanation, or so much as a hint of one, as to how or why. She just does. Upon reading the answer to the cure for the plague that eventually overtakes her little town, Ellen contemplates offering herself as a sacrifice to Orlok to save her husband and everyone else who hasn't yet fallen victim. Her most revealing moments are the introspective shots of her re-reading the rule and thinking silently to herself whether she wants to give up her own life in exchange for those of many others. In the end, she decides to do so, making her a heroic character of selflessness. Ellen also reveals herself as somewhat crafty in the bargain, pretending to fall ill so that Thomas can leave their home to fetch a physician while she invites her bloodsucking neighbor into her bedroom to feast. While women still had a long ways to go in the genre before becoming the resourceful, independent badasses we know many of them to be now, Ellen still ends up emerging as the hero of Nosferatu who puts an end to Orlok's centuries-long reign of evil and the plague he inflicts upon her hamlet.

The secondary antagonist of the story is Thomas' deceptive employer, Herr Knock, played with flamboyant, devilish relish by Granach. As I've indicated earlier, it's a little far-fetched that Thomas doesn't detect the uninhibited insanity behind Knock's deranged eyes and shining through his goofy smile. And not to take down another person's appearance, but come on! Look at that hair! That straggly, gray hair is the hairstyle adopted only by the maddest of mad scientists. But maybe that trope wasn't in place yet in 1922, so to be fair, I guess I should let that go. Plus, Thomas is a little on the naive side, as I've also said. While Thomas is reading a map to learn how to get to his new client's castle, Knock is secretly reading indecipherable occult symbols behind him, smiling maniacally. From his introduction in Thomas' home, there's no question about Knock's nefarious involvement in the plot that will unfold. As he sits in his isolated room in the asylum, with a single window he has to climb on a chair to see through, Knock repeatedly refers to Orlok as his "master" and patiently, enthusiastically salivates for his eventual arrival in Wisborg. Like Ellen, he too shares a telepathic bond with the vampire, only his is more in sync and gleeful. Prior to the events depicted, Orlok must have either possessed Knock into becoming his assistant/slave, or Knock made a deal with Orlok in exchange for some unnoted reward or power. Again, like the symbiotic relationship between Orlok and Ellen, it's never fleshed out. It just is. Knock's connection with the count is so strong that he attacks his guard when he idiotically turns his back, inhabiting at least some of Orlok's evil, and can sense the moment Orlok is vanquished by the morning sun at the conclusion.

Even if the motivations of certain characters like Orlok and Knock aren't spelled out, at least they have appearances and do things that are memorable. That's more than can be said about almost everyone else onscreen. Harding, Ruth, the two professors -- Bulwer (John Gottowt) and Sievers (Gustav Botz) -- the crewmembers of the Empusa, and the police investigating the plague are total nonentities. Harding is just friendly enough with Thomas to be entrusted with caring for his wife while he's working, and Ruth is... his sister. Though I will concede that I appreciate the way Ruth comforts Ellen after Thomas rides off to Transylvania. Ellen breaks down crying outside her house, and Ruth wraps her arms around her. As for the two "character" with the title "professor" before their names, I couldn't tell you Bulwer from Sievers. According to Wikipedia, Bulwer is a physician, and Sievers is the town doctor. Big difference. Neither makes a worthwhile contribution to the story, neither figures out a solution to Orlok's plague, neither is the slightest bit distinguishable from the other. They're just there. 

While the critics consensus for Nosferatu celebrates Schreck's performance as "chilling," I found Count Orlok -- based on Dracula -- to be more of an appearance than a full-fledged character, let alone a showcase for Schreck's alleged acting capabilities. Nonetheless, he's a brilliantly designed, nightmare-inducing appearance that will forever remain etched within my memory. The first time I ever saw Orlok, ironically enough, was in an episode of SpongeBob titled, "Graveyard Shift." At the very end, after the characters learn the source of their "haunting" was their own fear, Schreck's Orlok appears suddenly onscreen, playfully flickering the lights before flashing a mischievous (animated) smile. It was silly, out of nowhere, and incredibly unsettling all at once, and a reminder of how good that show used to be when it wasn't afraid to get a little edgy. In his actual movie, Orlok doesn't disappoint. In his first appearance, riding a carriage to Thomas to offer him a ride to his castle, Orlok's head is covered by a balaclava, revealing only the most frightening features of his face. I assume his reason for this is to avoid contact with the sun. Once inside, he removes the covering and his entire body is unveiled. And what a sight to behold. Orlok's appearance is a masterpiece in and of itself, aided by Schreck's God-given physical attributes. He's exceptionally tall and rail-thin; his head is bald, misshaped, and bumpy; visible beneath his upper lip are two pointy teeth; on either side of his head are a pair of pointy, elf-like ears; penetrating your worst nightmares are a set of oversized, bulging, crazed eyes that could compete with Charles Manson's most publicized 1968 mug shot; attached to his palms are elongated, spindly fingers, with razor-sharp nails sprouting out of each; his pasty complexion is complemented by a hooked nose (possibly owing to an anti-Semitic stereotype); and to top it all off is a black trench coat. Schreck's physical appearance, makeup, and outfit combine to create one of the scariest-looking monsters in the history of horror, as well as one of the greatest Halloween costumes I somehow never see in the stores. 

Now that we've got Orlok's appearance out of the way, his greatest asset by far, what can we say about his actual character? Not really a whole lot, at least not in terms of Murnau's original adaptation. There are two rules he must live by: sleeping in the coffin containing the earth with which he was originally buried, and sleeping in the daytime to avoid shriveling to a crisp in the rays of the morning sun. Now, here's a fascinating contradiction to him: he desires the blood of a maiden at her own free will (I guess so he can't be accused of uninvited penetration?), but it's that very desire that proves his undoing. Surely, Orlok knows he will die if exposed to sunlight (why else would he sleep in a coffin during the day?), but that knowledge is unable to suppress his thirst for female human intimacy, even if said intimacy manifests in the form of draining a woman dry of her blood. When Ellen relents and invites Orlok into her room to feast from her neck, Orlok forfeits his restraint and indulges in his sinful, bloodsucking desire, falling headfirst into his victim's scheme and paying the penalty with his own (undead) life. As evidenced when Thomas cuts his thumb, however, Orlok is happy to drink the blood of any mortal, man or woman, but other than that, he doesn't possess much of an interest in anything else. Why does he even want to purchase the house across from the Hutters? Did he know beforehand that Ellen would be his neighbor? Because it seems his first time even learning about her existence is when Thomas accidentally drops her picture onto his kitchen table. Why does he use Knock as an assistant? What does Knock do for him that he couldn't himself? What's his relationship to the rats, and why does he unleash them on his new town? Does he want everyone in Wisborg to be dead so he can be the only living resident? Is he not lonely enough as is?

Apparently, the original theatrical version of Nosferatu is literally a silent film, with not even any background music to compensate for the lack of verbal dialogue. That may have been the preferable option for me, as the version I picked comes with an overly incessant incidental score to accentuate every possible emotion experienced by the vapid characters. I'm assuming the composer of the score I heard was Hans Erdmann, as he's the only one credited. Safe to say, Erdmann is no Zimmer. Music plays throughout the majority of the 94-minute runtime, serving as an overcompensating substitute for verbalized interactions and environmental sounds. In the opening scenes focusing on the Hutters as they embrace and converse in the comfort of their home, Erdmann employs a cheerful, sweet-hearted melody to emphasize their pure, unabashed love and innocence. When Murnau shifts focus to Orlok and Knock's nefarious activities, so too does Erdmann shift to an overtly menacing and dramatic score. It's all very on the nose, as befits a horror film of this time period, and very quickly does it grow numbingly repetitious and overall forgettable. Compare this nonstop mood music to the legendary future horror scores of John Carpenter, John Williams, Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind, Disasterpeace, and the aforementioned Hans Zimmer. You can't.

Remember earlier when I said, as old as dated as this film has become over the last 100 years, I'm not oblivious to its enduring artistic assets? Well, primarily I was speaking about the cinematography by Fritz Arno Wagner and an apparently uncredited Gunther Krampf, which is consistently lovely to gaze at. The black and white color palette enslaves Nosferatu (in a good way) in the long-ago past, imbuing it with a dreamlike melancholy that also reflects Ellen Hutter's frame of mind. Wagner and Krampf transport us to this fictional, quaint little town with an assortment of beautiful scenery: long shots of endless trees backdropped by towering mountains, illuminated by a perpetually overcast sky fit for a rainstorm; close-ups of ocean waves rushing to the beach covered in white foam; long shots of the Empusa sitting motionlessly in the middle of the ocean. A less comforting but equally striking image comes in the form of Orlok's recently bought abode, a deserted prison-like building consisting of boarded windows.

Murnau and his cinematographers weave an abundance of memorable shots throughout Nosferatu that help guide modern viewers through some of its more sluggish and meandering patches: the long shot of horses in front of the Hutters' home running away from a newly arrived striped hyena; the plague-infested rats scurrying out of their coffin; Thomas' bedroom door slowly opening at midnight seconds before Orlok walks in, confirming his worst fear; Orlok slowly rising from his coffin and instilling the paralyzing fear of God into the sailor who marches to the bottom of the schooner to bust open the crates; Orlok staring out his window at Ellen across the street; and finally, the most innovative, nightmarish, and iconic of them all, the inky, larger-than-life silhouette of Orlok against the wall, scaling the stairs, slowly but surely, toward Ellen's bedroom. As pretty as the scenery consistently is, the excess shots of the ocean and of Thomas riding back to Germany on horseback drag out the relatively standard (but still way overlong) runtime and come across as filler.

For a 1920s production, the special effects in Nosferatu are sporadically impressive but overall uneven. Orlok's use of telekinesis is depicted better than I would've imagined, particularly in the spontaneous openings of coffin lids. The fast motion editing of Orlok stacking the crates atop the schooner, on the other hand, is choppy. His erasure in his final moment is smoothly executed, complemented by the follow-up shot of smoke on the floor.

In place of audible exchanges are dialogue intertitles that fill us in on what the characters are saying to each other, along with expository intertitles written by an unknown source who somehow knows everything that went down. The best thing I can say about these title cards is that they are held static onscreen more than long enough for audiences to fully read them (and reread them a couple times before the scene changes). Certain passages, like the sacrificial cure for the plague, are returned to, ostensibly to show that Ellen is rereading it and to convey her inner conflict and indecision, but more likely to remind inattentive audiences of crucial narrative information. There isn't much memorable dialogue to speak of. In the first scene, after Thomas gifts Ellen with some flowers, she reacts with an unmotivated sadness and says something to the effect of, "Such pretty flowers. Why did you kill them?" Girl, are you out of your mind? That's about the only line I can recall, and not in a complimentary way. Even though it's written instead of spoken, the dialogue is stilted and expository, which prevents me further from connecting with any of the characters on an emotional level. No one talks like a normal human being here. And just who exactly is this omniscient, unseen author telling the story? How does he know everything that happened to everyone? Is it Thomas' friend, Harding? I guess he would know him better than anyone, but it's not like he was present for most of the events documented.

This probably goes without saying, but since Nosferatu was made over 100 years ago, before the rise of graphic gore that attained popularity in the 1970s-80s, and advancements in eye-popping technology, the violence in this 1922 vampire pic is beyond tame. Despite centering around a vampire who feasts on the blood of women, as vampires tend to do in their waking hours, Nosferatu contains zero gore or visible murders. Take the scene where Knock possibly kills his inattentive guard. The guard sits on Knock's bed with his back turned to him (a maniac and a brainiac in one room), and Knock pounces on him. Because of the way Murnau shoots this attack, it's impossible to discern whether Knock strangles (and therefore kills) the man, or if he just renders him unconscious to execute his escape. Then there's Ellen's willing sacrifice. With this particular assault, there's no ambiguity as to her fate. She's lying in bed, and Orlok is sucking the life out of her through her "lovely neck." Murnau captures this pivotal moment in a single shot. Lying in bed, Ellen's head is turned toward the left side, away from the camera, and Orlok sits before her, his head resting against her neck with a hand on top of her head. There's no blood spurting, no sucking sound, but the immobile image paints a clear picture in our mind. As for the anonymous citizens of Wisborg killed by Orlok's plague, that's cleverly implied by somber shots of police walking in procession through town carrying coffins above their heads.

Speaking of said plague, that remains the only plot element with modern-day relevance of any sort. The police issuing a stay-at-home lockdown to the residents of Wisborg resonates strongly with the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, where the entire world was required to go on lockdown, stay inside our homes, schools had to close, and, the only inconvenient part for me, restaurants could only perform takeout. Plenty of more recent horror films capitalize on the pandemic fear more potently, but seeing such an old film involve real-world implications imbues it with a certain prescience that's timeless. 

As much as I admire Ellen's ultimate sacrifice, and the cunning she deploys to execute it, the ending of Nosferatu fails to elicit the sense of tragedy for which it's clearly striving. I expected to be more upset, if not torn to pieces, considering the love and affection between Ellen and Thomas is more than sufficiently demonstrated at the beginning. But after Ellen sends Thomas to fetch Bulwer, the two useless men take way too long to return to her. Murnau neglects to generate the urgency required to make this scene work. As for Orlok, who's supposed to be the wisest character of all, being that he's lived on this planet for more centuries than we can imagine, what is his motivation for walking directly in front of the emerging sunlight? If he were still sucking on Ellen's neck when the sun rose, and didn't notice the rays shining through the window, that would've made more sense on account of honest distraction. But no. Orlok knows the sun is rising, and he makes a conscious, if unhappy, decision to walk in front of the window, stand still, and allow the sunrays to snuff him out. Has he simply realized his existence is miserable and meaningless, and now that he got what he wanted, he feels free to go back to death?

Horror has undergone a lot of changes in the 100-plus years since Nosferatu's release. For one thing, sound has been incorporated into the story, so actors can just speak their lines without the writer having to draw up intertitles, and music can be employed more sparingly to accentuate the mood as opposed to explicitly spelling it out. Since the early 70s, filmmakers have embraced the gnarly awesomeness of visible screen carnage, no longer feeling obligated to leave every act of violence to the viewer's imagination. (If they still do, it's more a matter of artistic prerogative than mandatory restriction.) And with that emergence of what Roger Ebert deemed "the Mad Slasher genre" came the accompanying explicit nudity, primarily provided by the youthful female side of the cast. Thanks to the visionary minds of genre trailblazers like Tobe Hooper, Brian De Palma, John Carpenter, Sean Cunningham, and Dario Argento, no longer do the men and women populating every horror film have to be clad in those hideous (by today's standards, anyway) outfits that cover the body from chest to toe. Hell, clothing in general isn't even a requirement in every scene, which is why we'll never see an actress looking like Greta Schroder ever again. 

But as my cousin would say (the same smart one who suggested I review this movie in the first place), movies like Nosferatu had to walk so that the movies we have today could run. Whether you enjoy it or not, whether its images creep their way under your skin and infiltrate your nightmares or provoke bouts of unintended laughter, and whether the slow pacing immerses you in the unreal environment of the story and allows you to soak in the beautiful black-and-white scenery or bores you to an eternal rest, there's no denying the imprint left by Nosferatu on the horror genre as a whole. Count Orlok will always remain the first vampire to appear and wreak havoc on the screen, and from a physical standpoint, he will most likely remain the most indelible and blood-curdling. The traits that we associate with vampires -- pale skin, sharp teeth, thirst for human blood, death upon exposure to sunlight -- wouldn't exist if they hadn't been established in Galeen's screenplay. Remember that early ominous scene in Friday the 13th where Robbi Morgan walks into a diner asking how far it is to Camp Crystal Lake, and everyone inside, patron and employee alike, stops what they're doing, falls silent, and stares at Morgan with expressions of mutual unease? Would that have even been written if Thomas hadn't walked into that inn, mentioned Orlok's name, and received those same simultaneous, silent, horrified stares?

Even though the names of Nosferatu's characters were altered to avoid accusations of copyright infringement, Bram Stoker's widow still sued Murnau, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the movie to be destroyed. For better and worse (okay, mostly better), many prints survived, and that's why I'm even able to sit here typing this review right now. And for that, I'm grateful, but that doesn't mean I thoroughly enjoyed myself yesterday while watching the movie. Quite the contrary. While I can appreciate its influence on future (superior) genre contributions and its entrancing cinematography, I'd be flat-out lying if I said certain passages didn't leave me feeling as drained and lifeless as a vampire's latest meal.

5.2/10