Nosferatu is a fairly well done telling of Dracula. The shots themselves are very pretty, and the music that accompanied the film was very fitting and atmospheric.  Anyone that can tolerate the trademark trappings of a very, very old movie (color tinting for lighting, silent) will probably enjoy it.

Nosferatu is one of those movies, in which the viewers can actually sense the evil. And yeah, I did not find the movie horrifying, probably of my developed standards after watching movies like Saw, Scream, Hills Have Eyes, and countless other “horror” films of the recent decades. However, comparing Nosferatu to any of the movies mentioned above is as ridiculous as comparing Audrey Hepburn to Drew Barrymore. Nosferatu casts a haunting effect on its viewer by catalyzing and spreading the broad concept of evil all through the film.  With his large, pointed ears, rat-like fangs, and long claws, Max Schreck in his most famous role as Count Orlok is the first, and perhaps greatest, vampire of cinema. In contrast to today’s unrealistic standards for the undead, Nosferatu showed us a “true” vampire, ahardworking predator equipped for hunting and feeding, as Mother Nature intended, rather than a sleek poseur in improbably-immaculate evening clothes. Max Schreck made Orlock a grotesque and nightmarish embodiment of the Black Death.

I really enjoyed the use of shadows and empty space in the movie. I thought it was an ingenious tactic to create its haunting effect.

This tactic is also used in many other films, but it particularly reminded me of the utilization of shadows in Hitchcock’s classic Psycho: the scene in which the killer’s outline and knife are shown as shadows virtually mimics the scene from Nosferatu in which Orlok’s shadow approaches the unconscious body of Hutter.

So the movie, to me, is best summarized by this quote: “Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.” Steven Erikson, House of Chains. Vampires jump out of shadows, and evil can grow in them.