So scary I forgot to scream

A shadowy clawed figure comes rising up the stairs with sharp claws. Ellen sees count Orlock and slowly steps back towards her bed. A shadow of a hand rises over her body. The shadow becomes a fist over Ellen’s heart as she feints under the power of the count. The Count bows himself over Ellen’s body. The sun rises we see a rooster caw and simple beams of light strike Nosferatu dies raising his shroud of mystery. The legendary film “Nosferatu” mastered the idea that the unknown causes more fear then anything else possibly could and tried to teach audiences that to fear what they cannot see can be foolish or comical. The use of shadows with the stark contrast of whites and blacks makes the character of Nosferatu frightening because it forces the viewer to fear what might happen next building anticipation, effectively making transition scenes some of the most frightening in the movie. Oddly enough, Nosferatu dies from something simple as sunlight which means the viewer was literally chasing shadows with their mind and this great terror was bested by a simple women letting some light into her room. The film plays with the “fear of the unknown” by making the villagers at the beginning of the film fear the Count but Hutter does not.
Even though the lead of the film is not afraid of what is to come the audience is to begin to feel afraid of what Hutter is going to encounter when he meets the Count. The idea of fear that Nosferatu created has inspired films ever since but even Nosferatu went beyond many modern films by almost making a mockery of the method it used to cause fear.