Summary
The Nosferatu stalks the streets of Wisborg with a coffin under his arm. Hutter returns to the doctor's house, where he left Ellen before departing. The couple embrace. Inside, the reunited couple kiss, but both seem exhausted. They can obviously sense that this is not their happy ending. Back outside, the Nosferatu trots around and eventually finds his new abode, the abandoned building across from Hutter's and Ellen's house. He takes a little row boat right up to it, climbs out, and stands contemplating in front of the door. And then he vanishes into thin air.
Inspectors climb aboard the doomed ship that the Nosferatu steered to Wisborg. Aboard, they find the captain dead and tied to the wheel, two holes in his neck. One of them remarks to the higher ups that there is no living soul on board. As they are hauling the captain's corpse off the boat, one of the inspectors goes below deck and find's the captain's log. It lists a full crew on the July 12th entry. He brings this log to the hall where the Professor we met giving the lecture earlier is inspecting the captain's body. The inspector reads the log aloud. It describes an unknown passenger below deck, a sick crew mate driven to madness, and, a few entries later, rats and a threat of plague.
Professor Bulwer takes the book and declares that everyone must go home, and lock their doors and windows. A drummer takes to the streets to bring the townsfolk to their windows and warn them to stay inside on account of the plague threat. He declares that all sick and deceased must stay inside. We see the inspector who found the log going down the street marking doors with crosses. Behind these doors are the plague victims. A coffin is retrieved from a home and carried down the street.
We soon see Ellen poring over that strange little book about the occult that Hutter so delightfully tossed on the ground earlier in the film. She's scandalized by it, and we can't tell if she feels more horror or titillation. She points through the window, to that abandoned building across the way. The thing that lives there haunts her every night. Hutter is absolutely helpless to comfort Ellen, and we can see the naked fear in his eyes as he turns to look at that building.
We learn that this terror has taken the whole town, with the possibility that any healthy looking person may, in fact, be stricken with the plague. The madness has taken hold of the everyday people. We're shown a young woman in the throes of sickness, her husband attending to her. She startles awake with the sound of the wind and collapses sobbing. Ellen watches from her window as a procession carries coffins down the street.
And then Ellen finds the book again. She opens it and reads that the vampire can only be stopped by a sinless maiden who keeps it awake until daylight and willingly gives him some of her blood. Ellen seems to realize that she, in fact, is a sinless maiden. The townspeople are starting to devise a solution of their own, and start pursuing Knock. They find him on top of a roof and throw rocks at him until he dismounts, and the mob starts chasing him through the streets. We come back to Ellen embroidering a cloth with the sentence "I love you." Knock continues to run, gleefully so. The mob finally apprehends him in the countryside.
Ellen jolts awake when she senses the Nosferatu staring at out from his window across the way. She is drawn to her window by the vampire's supernatural force. The Nosferatu steps out onto the street and Ellen panics. She wakes Hutter up but faints in his arms. He lays her in bed and she wakes up to tell him to fetch Professor Bulwer. He goes, leaving her alone. We see the Nosferatu's shadow creep through her house, reaching out to the door to her room. Ellen retreats to her bed and the shadow of the Nosferatu's hand starts creeping up her dress. It grabs her heart and she faints.
After much struggle, Hutter manages to wake up Professor Bulwer. It's too late though, as the Nosferatu has already taken Ellen as his victim. Yet the rooster crows, and the Nosferatu realizes he has stayed awake until daylight. Across town, we see Knock starting to act especially maniacal in his jail cell. We watch the Nosferatu convulse and throw himself around Ellen's room until he dissolves into smoldering smoke. Hutter and Professor Bulwer arrive to find Ellen in her bed, but she dies in Hutter's arms as soon as he takes her.
Analysis
This is when it all falls apart. We see the cosmopolitan city of Wisborg regress to a medieval city, with every family quarantined in their own home either to protect them from the plague or contain them to protect the others. Likewise, we see the townsfolk devolve into raving masses, pursuing Knock through the streets to seek retribution for what they know he has brought to this town.
Murnau shows us exactly how delicate the modern social fabric is. Upon the introduction of violence and uncertainty, everything falls apart. There are clear resonances here with the state of European society during World War I, and in this we can also see some foretelling of the social dynamic that will play out during the economically distressed Weimar period that would culminate in the Nazis taking power.
Note the total impotence of Professor Bulwer in these final scenes. He is Nosferatu's analog for Professor Van Helsing, yet he doesn't even begin to guess the occult source of the town's terror and is unable to do anything to halt the plague once it hits town. He even arrives at the Hutter residence too late to revive Ellen. Scientific rationalism has totally failed as a force for good and order. Really, all Bulwer was good for was pointing out to his students that parasites exist, but when it came to using scientific thinking to resolves the crisis on Wisborg, he was powerless.
Murnau also takes the opportunity, in this part of the film, to explore the fraught theme of sexuality. In 1921, he had yet to really come to terms with his own homosexuality, and he powerfully portrays the push and pull of eroticism as both a natural mode for humans and a vector for great evil. Ellen seduces the vampire, finally exploring a side of herself that her so-far virginal life has prohibited, and seems to relish in it to some extent. But the result, of course, is her death. She keeps the vampire awake until daylight, but her own efforts ultimately kill her.
