Before vampires sparkled, seduced, or brooded, they stalked. F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror remains one of cinema’s purest expressions of dread—a silent nightmare where plague and superstition seep through every warped frame. Though born from an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Murnau’s creation stands apart: colder, stranger, and more disease-ridden than any gothic predecessor. The film feels excavated rather than directed, as if Murnau dug up something ancient and let it crawl across the screen.
At the center of this unearthed terror is Max Schreck’s Count Orlok, whose elongated silhouette and rat-like features have become archetypal. Where Stoker’s Dracula is a seductive aristocrat, Orlok is a walking contagion. His body bends like a question mark, his fingers stretch like grave twigs, and his stare—unyielding, insectile—suggests hunger without end. But the genius of Nosferatu lies not just in its monster, but in Murnau’s ability to turn landscape, shadow, and motion into a living expression of fear.
Official restoration trailer for Nosferatu (1922)
The Plague in the Frame
Murnau shoots like a documentarian of nightmares. Sunlight becomes lethal, architecture tilts toward madness, and each set feels haunted before Orlok even arrives. The film’s German Expressionist influences—painted shadows, skewed geometry, theatrical staging—heighten the sense that reality itself is buckling. Yet beneath the stylization lies a potent cultural unease: post-war paranoia, whispers of pestilence, and fears of borders breached by invisible enemies. Nosferatu channels these anxieties into every frame of Orlok’s journey from castle to ship to city.
What shocks modern viewers is how tactile the horror remains. Murnau weaponizes silence, letting small gestures—Orlok rising stiffly from his coffin, his shadow creeping up a staircase, the ship’s derelict emptiness—do the screaming for him. The absence of sound amplifies the uncanny; each movement becomes too precise, too controlled, as though Orlok is not just undead but improperly alive.
Key Scene: The Shadow Ascends
The most chilling sequence in Nosferatu may also be its quietest. Ellen, pale and sleepless, waits in her bedroom as Orlok approaches. We never see him physically enter. Instead, his elongated shadow glides across her wall, fingers stretching impossibly as they close around her heart. Murnau transforms shadow into predator—an embodiment of all that is unseen yet inevitable. It’s filmmaking at its most primal: terror created not with spectacle but with subtraction.
In this moment, the film crystallizes its thesis: horror thrives not in what is shown, but what is suggested. The shadow’s autonomy—its independence from the body casting it—becomes a metaphor for the spread of fear itself. Contagion, rumor, death: all cast shadows long before arriving.
Sound & Style: The Symphony Without Sound
Though silent, Nosferatu feels scored by unease. Its original orchestral accompaniments were designed to mirror the film’s tonal shifts—somber for Orlok’s castle, frenetic for the plague-ridden city, melancholic for Ellen’s sacrifice. Modern restorations preserve this approach, blending strings, dissonance, and dirge-like motifs to emphasize the film’s funereal rhythm. Visually, Murnau’s use of natural locations sets it apart from studio-bound peers: barren plains, storm-swept seas, and cramped streets merge with expressionist lighting to create a world both real and unreal.
The film's signature tinting—amber for daylight, blue for night, red for fear—adds a dreamlike layering that modern viewers might mistake for surrealism. In truth, it was a practical tool for emotional clarity, one that now reads as poetic shorthand for the film’s shifting moods.
Legacy and Influence
Few films wear their own legend as comfortably as Nosferatu. Nearly destroyed by lawsuits, resurrected by archivists, and mythologized by cinephiles, it has endured for more than a century because it speaks to something elemental. Orlok is not a seducer but a symptom—a manifestation of the rot that creeps in when faith falters and fear spreads. Silent, skeletal, and single-minded, he stands as the blueprint for the cinematic monster.
As a work of art, Nosferatu remains hypnotic. As a piece of horror history, it is foundational. And as a cultural artifact, it still chills—proof that shadows, once cast, never quite disappear.
Related Reviews: Halloween (1978) • The Exorcist (1973) • The Stuff (1985)