The Scariest Parts of Nosferatu Were Never Onscreen
Beware his shadow.
Nosferatu centers around the newlywed Hutters, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), whose nuptial bliss is interrupted when Thomas is sent away to secure a housing contract from the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard). The contract is a ruse, as we discover that Orlok is a powerful ancient vampire obsessed with Thomas’ vulnerable young wife, who exhibits a mysterious connection to the shadowy Count. When Orlok makes his apocalyptic arrival in their town of Wisburg, it threatens to engulf the region, possibly the world, in plagues, death, and shadow. As frightening as Count Orlok was, the scariest parts never made it to the silver screen.
Despite the gore and various jump scares littered through Nosferatu, its most terrifying aspect is the implication that the Hutters live in a larger world beset with supernatural forces. Our first real intimations of this larger world happen relatively early on, in a vampire encounter with a cryptic meaning. In Thomas’ journey to Orlok’s castle, he encounters a village surrounded by superstitious locals in a region flush with vampire lore. In his very first night at a local inn, Thomas wakes to see a torch-wielding congregation of these people surrounding a nude young woman on a horse. Curious, he follows them as the procession arrives at “the vampire’s grave.” They unearth the corpse, and the lead vampire hunter shouts “God send you burst!” before stabbing the somewhat desiccated corpse, which screams out and emits ghastly levels of fluid from its mouth. Thomas wakes the next morning with mud on his boots, suggesting it wasn’t a dream, which begs the question: how many vampires are in this area? That thing sure seemed to be a slain vampire, but it absolutely wasn’t the powerful Nosferatu, and it happened immediately on his first real night on the road. This leave the impression that the region is positively flooded with the bloodsuckers and we never see the extent of it.
On Thomas’ harrowing escape from Orlok’s castle, he luckily ends up in the care of a sect of Romanian nuns. They tell him that Orlok was a “black mystic” in life called a “Solomonar,” and this is significant. The Solomonari were said to be dragon-riding, weather-controlling wizards, so all that weather control he exhibits on the seas? He could do that before his vampiric transformation, and then we’re told “the devil preserved his soul that his corpse may walk again in blasphemy.”
Orlok approaches Ellen as a young child.
This means a few things, none of which we see beyond Nosferatu himself. On the one hand, this world contains a powerful devil who revels in creating monstrosities. Who knows what else it has done? On the other, the world contains powerful magics and dark magicians that could be plaguing the world on a large scale.
Willem Dafoe’s alchemist Prof. von Franz alludes to as much, referencing a host of unseen and frightening experiences in his experience as an alchemist and knowledgeable scholar of the supernatural. While he has never “encountered Nosferatu firsthand” before, he does note he’s seen a variety of supernatural experiences before these events. As he expresses (in one of the film’s best lines), “I have seen things in this world that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother's womb! … I have wrestled with the Devil as Jacob wrestled the Angel in Penuel, and I tell you that if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists!”
What horrors has Dafoe’s Prof. von Franz seen?
Should we see Von Franz’s battles with the Devil, and the things that would send Newton crawling for the womb? Yes! What are these things!? They suggest all manner of terrors that we have mere vague mentions of, and Dafoe’s excellent performance truly suggests their gravitas.
All these build the picture of a world under constant threat of supernatural terrors, lurking in the background of the world. An active, monster-creating Devil, vampires everywhere, dark wizards and ancient magics, whatever terrorized Von Franz so… this is a world overrun with vampires, beasts, magic, and satanic influence, and we only see a minuscule part of it. Nosferatu may be the most powerful vampire (unconfirmed), but it all builds a picture of a world where humanity constantly suffers terrors beyond imagination, and we see none of it on the big screen.
