The action of the picture is so disconnected as to make the continuity confusing. However, this one certainly holds interest, for its extreme weirdness and its unusual photography.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 8, 2021

So this is it: ground zero, the birth of horror cinema.

| Oct 14, 2014

The movie's best effect is its star...He looks every bit like an actual demonic wild-thing, retrieved from deep within the German wilderness and trotted out to perform for Murnau's camera.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 19, 2013

There is pure expressionist inspiration in Murnau's juxtaposition of the malign wolves and the terrified old women: a poetry of fear.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 24, 2013

It is the sort of thing one could watch at midnight without its having much effect upon one's slumbering hours.

| Aug 21, 2013

Never mind that much of the story of this first important screen version of the Dracula legend seems corny and dated, for what counts is its atmosphere and its images, which are timeless in their power.

| Aug 21, 2013

Less frightening than haunting, Murnau's film conjures a persistent atmosphere of dread and decay, thanks in part to Max Schreck's immortal performance as Orlok.

| Aug 21, 2013

It's not just a great horror movie. It's a poem of horror, a symphony of dread, a film so rapt, mysterious and weirdly lovely it haunts the mind long after it's over.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 21, 2013

The metaphysical style is most vividly rendered by Murnau's obsessive use of point-of-view shots, which force a viewer to follow the characters into the abyss of their terrifying visions.

| Aug 21, 2013

Murnau proved his directorial artistry in Sunrise for Fox about three years earlier, but in this picture he's a master artisan demonstrating not only a knowledge of the subtler side of directing but in photography.

| May 16, 2008

Watching Nosferatu is like standing in the same room as death itself.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 26, 2007

A visual and emotional treat.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 19, 2007

The film shows Murnau's uncanny mixture of expressionism and location shooting at its finest.

| Sep 19, 2007

A masterpiece of the German silent cinema and easily the most effective version of Dracula on record.

| Sep 19, 2007

Murnau's classic vampire movie, though not his best film, remains one of the most poetic of all horror films.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2007

Almost unique in imagining a vampire who is not darkly attractive, but corpselike and ghastly… the imagery resists allegorization, remaining simply, unsettlingly, itself.

| Original Score: A- | Nov 3, 2003

In the realm of vampire films, this 1922 silent is the original motherlode. No one since has matched vampire Max Schreck's creepy loathsomeness.

| Mar 10, 2003

While it clearly moves at a slower pace than most modern films, it is still one of the most beautiful and atmospheric horror pictures ever made.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

It doesn't scare us, but it haunts us. It shows not that vampires can jump out of shadows, but that evil can grow there, nourished on death.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000