Nosferatu

The mysterious Count Orlok summons a happily married real estate agent to his castle, located up in the Transylvanian mountains, to finalise a terrifying deal.

A landmark of silent cinema and horror, Nosferatu has accumulated an almost universal critical reputation as one of the most important films ever made — placed fourth on the list of the 100 greatest German films, included on the Vatican's list of essential viewing, and consistently cited as the template for horror that followed. The key point of discussion is not whether the film is great but what kind of greatness it achieves: critics tend to distinguish between its ability to frighten and its power to haunt, and early German reviewers even found Count Orlok too brightly lit to be genuinely scary.