Nosferatu (2024): parents' guide
Best for ages 17 and up. Rated R for bloody violent content, graphic nudity and some sexual content.
A gorgeous, deeply disturbing gothic horror film for older teens and adults only. In 1838 Germany, a young wife who has been under a vampire's psychic hold since girlhood watches him follow her husband home, bringing plague with him. The film is bloody, with throat-biting, stakings and corpses, and it is sexually frank: full nudity, rough sex scenes, and a vampire whose feeding on the heroine is staged as a coerced sexual act. Two children die, with the aftermath shown, and their parents die too. Language is mild. The sexual coercion and graphic nudity are why we suggest 17.
What's in it
Violence
StrongThroats are torn open with spurting blood as the vampire feeds; people are staked with gushing blood, eaten by rats and burned. A man bites the head off a pigeon. Sexual violence: the vampire's final, sexualized feeding on the heroine is coerced by threats.
Language
MildMild and infrequent: a few uses of 'damn,' 'bloody,' 'bastard' and 'hell,' plus one crude line about sodomy and a character's disparaging remarks about Romani people.
Sex and nudity
StrongFull female nudity, brief full male nudity (partly in shadow) and a nude graveyard ritual. A married couple has rough sex with moaning, a widower is implied to have sex with his wife's corpse, and the vampire's claim on the heroine dates to her girlhood.
Drinking, drugs and smoking
ModerateAdults drink at a dinner party and smoke cigars and cigarettes on screen, and the husband's drink at the vampire's castle appears to be drugged. No drunkenness or drug use beyond that.
Scary or intense scenes
StrongSustained dread throughout: the heroine's violent seizures and possession, nightmare visions with bleeding eyes, plague rats and piles of corpses, a decaying vampire, and the discovery of two dead children. Jump scares punctuate the slow build.
Sensitive topics
- Sexual assault
- Death of a child
- Death of a parent
Worth talking about
The heroine's warnings are dismissed by the men around her, who blame her nerves. Talk about how the film connects her suffering to the way women's voices were ignored, and how coercion differs from consent.
On our lists
Similar picks around 17+
Checked October 13th, 2026 against Common Sense Media, Plugged In, bbfc.co.uk, Wikipedia, the MPA, movieguide.org. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.