Review #216: Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror (1922)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #71: Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror (1922)

Similar to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu is one of those films that's probably worth watching for the simple fact that it's such an early example of what would eventually become an iconic touchstone for popular culture. However, also like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, by modern standards I feel it's incredibly boring and confusing.

Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror follows an estate agent named Hutter (not Butter, as the title cards made it seem and frankly would have been a much better name) who is sent by his creepy, vampire-like boss to travel to Transylvania to meet the creepy, vampire-like Count Orlok who is interested in buying a home in Hutter's town of Wisbourg for some reason. Hutter travels there, meets the creepy count, reads a pamphlet about vampires, and eventually recognizes Orlok for what he is, but not in time to stop the count from heading off to Wisbourg via boat. Hutter somehow manages to get home first, where his boss has apparently become long-distance enthralled by the vampire (?) and Hutter's wife becomes Orlok's next target. I guess she sacrifices herself or something to distract Orlok long enough to be touched by the rising sun, and he dies. And then the movie is over.

This movie is... rough. First, it's another silent film, which means most of the scenes consist of the characters doing nothing of consequence until a title card pops up with like three words of dialogue on it, and then the scene changes again. I watched this movie sped up, similar to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and it still felt like it was going too slow. Also, it was very difficult to tell which scenes were supposed to be in the daytime and which were supposed to be at night, because all of them were clearly filmed in broad daylight (with the only difference being that certain scenes were given a colored tint after-the-fact, but this still wasn't a good indicator because it wasn't entirely consistent or obvious which colors meant what). Several of the characters' arcs (if they can even be called that) made little to no sense- like Hutter's boss, Knock, apparently becoming enthralled by Orlok at some point during the film despite them never coming in contact with one another, or Hutter's wife Ellen having psychic visions of Hutter's encounters with Orlok and possibly prophetic dreams? I really don't understand what was going on there, and considering it seems 95% of this film was plagiarized straight from Bram Stoker's novel (to the point where they lost a lawsuit about that very issue) I'm inclined to assume the motivations were clearer in the novel but the filmmakers decided they were somehow beyond the capabilities of film to convey.

Most of my enjoyment during the film came from wondering how much of our popular understanding of vampire lore came from this movie- because I really do think it's interesting if this was the progenitor of most of the things we attribute to vampires (sleeping in coffins, drinking blood from the neck, etc.). But after doing a bit of research, it seems Bram Stoker already came up with basically all of that twenty-five years earlier, with the one notable exception being Orlok's vulnerability to sunlight. So I guess it has that going for it, but not much else.

Overall this was a dull, confusing experience that wasn't even original at the time it was made. Feel free to watch this if you're genuinely curious but I don't recommend it. I'd give this a rock-bottom score if there weren't so many cute pet rats in it, so for that I'm bumping it up one number.

Overall Rating: 2/10 Mosquito Bites on the Neck, Very Close Together, One Beside the Other

Strangely Prescient Advice: "Hutter had pleaded with Ellen not to touch the book with the faces that had frightened him -- but she could not resist its strange attraction." Apparently Facebook addiction was a problem back in the 1800s too!