Based on a screenplay by Henrik Galeen, it stars Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife (Greta Schröder) of his estate agent (Gustav von Wangenheim) and brings the plague to their town.
Nosferatu was produced by Prana Film and is an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. Various names and other details were changed from the novel, including Count Dracula being renamed Count Orlok. Although those changes are often represented as a defense against copyright infringement accusations, the original German intertitles acknowledged Dracula as the source. Film historian David Kalat states in his commentary track that since the film was "a low-budget film made by Germans for German audiences... setting it in Germany with German-named characters makes the story more tangible and immediate for German-speaking viewers".
Even with several details altered, Stoker's widow sued over the adaptation's copyright violation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre.Critic and historian Kim Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the genre of horror film.

In 1838, in the fictional German town of Wisburg, Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania by his employer, the eccentric estate agent Herr Knock, to visit a new client, Count Orlok, who is planning on buying a house across from Hutter's own residence. As Hutter studies the route on a map, Knock secretly studies a mysterious correspondence in cabalistic symbols. While embarking on his journey, Hutter stops at an inn in which the locals are terrified by the mere mention of Orlok's name. In his room, he finds a book about vampires, which he initially scoffs at but puts in his baggage.
After his carriage refuses to take him further than the entrance to the mountain pass, Hutter travels on foot until after sunset, when he is met on the road by a coach and rides to Orlok's castle in the Carpathian Mountains, where he is welcomed by Orlok himself. While Hutter is eating supper, he accidentally cuts his thumb; Orlok tries to suck the blood out, but his repulsed guest pulls his hand away. Hutter wakes up the next morning to find fresh punctures on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitoes. That night, Orlok signs the documents to purchase the house and notices on the table a miniature portrait of Hutter's wife, Ellen, an image that the young man carries with him in a small circular frame. Admiring the portrait, the count remarks that she has a "lovely neck."
Reading the book that he took from the inn, Hutter begins to suspect that Orlok is indeed a vampire. With no way to bar the door to his bedroom, Hutter desperately tries to hide as midnight approaches. Suddenly, the door begins to slowly open by itself and, as Orlok enters, a terrified Hutter hides under the bedcovers and falls unconscious. Meanwhile, back in Wisburg, Ellen arises from her own bed and sleepwalks to the railing of her bedroom's balcony. She starts walking on top of the railing, which gets the attention of Thomas' friend Harding in the adjacent room. When the doctor arrives, Ellen envisions Orlok in his castle threatening her unconscious husband and shouts Hutter's name, which somehow Orlok is able to hear, causing him to withdraw.
On the next day, Hutter explores the castle. In a vault, he finds the coffin in which Orlok is resting dormant in the crypt and flees back to his room. Hours later, as Hutter watches, Orlok piles up coffins on a coach and climbs into the last one before the coach departs. Hutter manages to escape from the castle, injuring himself in the process, and after a period of recovery, he rushes home. Orlok's coffins are taken aboard a schooner, which the sailors open only to discover rats. All of the crewmen later die, and Orlok takes control of the vessel. Not long after Hutter returns home, the ship arrives in Wisburg; Orlok leaves unobserved, carrying one of his coffins, and moves into the house that he purchased.
Many deaths in the town follow Orlok's arrival, which the local doctors attribute to an unspecified plague caused by the rats from the ship. Knock, who has gone completely insane, is confined to a mental asylum, but escapes after strangling one of the wardens. Against Hutter's wishes, Ellen reads the book that he found on his journey; it claims that a vampire can be destroyed if a pure-hearted woman distracts the vampire from the approaching dawn with her beauty and by offering him her blood of her own free will; Ellen decides to sacrifice herself to stop Orlok. Knock, who the villagers blame for the plague, is eventually re-captured and returned to the asylum. Ellen opens her window to invite Orlok in and pretends to fall ill so that she can send Hutter to fetch Professor Bulwer, a physician. After he leaves, Orlok enters and drinks her blood, but the sun rises and its rays cause Orlok to vanish in a puff of smoke, which Knock in his asylum cell senses and is shattered by. Ellen lives just long enough to be embraced by her grief-stricken husband.
The film's final image is that of Orlok's castle, destroyed.