Nosferatu, Fantasy, and the Death of Horror

In the last 20 years, the horror films genre has gone out the window. Perhaps, to be more specific, I should say that it has changed immensely for the worse. Horror films were one time stylistically astounding, filled with utterly believable special effects, that endowed the audience with a series of particularly haunting images. Now, the horror genre is just an indication that at some point there will be buckets of gore and a strange creature that jumps at you from the darkness. Gone are the twisted angles of Wise’s The Haunting, the twisting head of Friedkin’s The Exorcist, or even the rotting Mrs. Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho. The actual schism between what is good horror and bad, though, is not age, as many believe; rather, it has more to do with a sort of realism. The reason Psycho is more frightening than Saw, is because the amount of disbelief in need of suspension is greatly reduced. Even when it comes to the films of seemingly supernatural events, such as Nosferatu, the unauthorized adaptation of Dracula, the characters are portrayed so realistically to force the viewer to actually think about whether vampires could exist, and what this would entail. These great horror films are imbued with this realism that carries them past the guards at our brains so that they can secure a place in the depths of our souls.

When discussing these films and their relationship to the horror genre, it is first important to consider its macrocosmic genre, fantasy. In reality, all of these excellent films exist in the fantasy realm. In his book The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Tzvetan Todorov defines fantasy as the “hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.” He goes on to describe the uncanny and the marvelous as the two rational outcomes of a fantasy. Either we view the material as something that is surprising but not unheard of, or as supernatural, something we cannot understand with these laws of nature. The reason these great horror films, especially Nosferatu, are so great lies in their ability to prolong the fantastic hesitation.

In Nosferatu, we are presented with a story that is seemingly supernatural. The problem with viewing this film now, in the 21st century, is that we have seen everything that followed it. Count Dracula (or Orlok) has become a character that is exaggerated, devoid of moral capability, and lacking any ability to be believable. It is immediately discarded as a simple story, something “marvelous” that has ceased to marvel us. But in Nosferatu, we are presented with a physically, mentally, even sexually tormented creature, just to the left of human. There are times in the film where we can see his pain, though we never sympathize with him. He is utterly believable as a Count Dracula, and he more than any other, makes you question the possibility of vampires. It gives the audience a window through which we could imagine this world existing, we can’t tell yet if a vampire is uncanny or supernatural. With its relatively sober set design (compared to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, its contemporary) it suggests that even this place could exist.

Todorov also suggests in his work that two other conditions are necessary for a work to qualify as fantasy. The first is that a character in the work also must experience the same hesitation that the audience does. This requirement is fulfilled in the character of Thomas Hutter. Hutter rejects the possibility of Orlok at the onset of the film, but as it progresses he begins to believe that such a thing might, in fact be possible. His doubt propels our own doubt as we begin to accept the possibility. This very doubt is the making of the haunting resonance that great horror films possess. Nosferatu leaves you contemplating the presence of vampires outside, whereas Saw is completely unbelievable. You finish that movie and set it aside, knowing that such a thing would never actually happen. The last condition is that the audience must reject all sort of allegorical or metaphorical meaning in the work. It must be approached with a certain attitude. This attitude is the only attitude to take when watching any of the aforementioned great horror films, let alone Nosferatu. One is enveloped in the story of Hutter and Orlok, unable to even think if this film is about something else.

In effect, all of the great horror films fall into the category of fantasy, as they prolong the hesitation of the audience. In The Haunting we are utterly convinced that the house itself was built incorrectly and is partly evil. In Psycho, the twist boggles our mind, but we don’t make something special out of it. In The Shining, Nicholson’s performance as he slowly becomes more and more insane pushes us to care little about the issues we typically hear about this film. The reason modern horror is a defunct and broken genre is that it no longer chills us to the bone. In order for it o be frightening, we must respond to it in a fantastical way. We must be able to believe that it could be true. Otherwise, the film is simply a series of cheap gimmicks meant to catch us off guard.