HADRIEN DUFOURT

With Nosferatu in 1922, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau established an aesthetic code that radically marked the seventh art. In 1979, Ridley Scott's Alien responded so well to this code that it is structurally superimposable on Nosferatu, sequence by sequence, sometimes shot by shot. Two masterpieces that seem far apart, but which nevertheless resemble each other to a confusing degree. By comparing them, we see the mechanisms of horror appear. We understand why we are afraid. Horror cinema has been the subject of numerous documentaries and books that trace the history of the "great figures of evil in the seventh art", without revealing its manufacturing secrets. However, fear, rather than the exhibition of monsters, is a true expressive technique: a language. The aesthetic founded by German expressionist filmmakers endures.​ One hundred years after Nosferatu, beyond incredible visual and sound innovations, horror cinema still applies the same recipes. Thanks to the comparison between Alien and Nosferatu, as well as examples taken from more than 220 horror films, from the origins of cinematography to the most daring contemporary productions, I translate this language and reveal the method scrupulously applied for a century by the most talented directors.