What's it about? If you're familiar with the plot of Bram Stoker's Dracula (and let's be honest, who isn't?) then you'll find it easy to spot the correlating characters and incidents in F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu. Murnau couldn't secure the rights to Stoker's masterpiece so pretty much stole the plot wholesale, replacing the word "Vampire" with "Nosferatu" and switching Dracula's name to Count Orlok. What makes it groundbreaking? Widely recognised as the birth of horror cinema, Nosferatu's stunning use of distorted, angular sets in the style of German Expressionism established the style guide for horror aesthetic for decades to come, while Max Schreck's insanely creepy performance as Count Orlok remains to this day one of the most chilling portrayals of a vampire ever seen on screen. Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari might have explored the potential for horror in a similar fashion in 1920, but Murnau truly nailed it two years later with Nosferatu.
