The word Gothic evokes very specific, and perhaps topical, imagery. Gloomy, stormy castles, misty marshes, old, decrepit, haunted mansions, fog-shrouded cemeteries, ancestral curses, and creaky crypts where the undead never rest easy. Dark, rainy, dank environments. A very European aesthetic, in other words. What that very same word certainly does not suggest are dead-pan deserts and lonely roads stalked by an assortment of menaces ranging from the human to the sub-human, an

The horror genre has seen peaks and troughs of popularity down through the decades, but it has never been far from cinema screens or printed media. The advent of streaming services heralded a strong resurgence that continues to this day. It would be fair to argue that the horror genre remains current, innovative, and relevant. Post-apocalyptic horror, on the other hand, has waned in presence and relevance over the past four decades or so. While popular (and one might say, ma

​ Manderley. The Overlook Hotel. The Bly Estate. The Marsten House. These are just some of the most (in)famous haunted houses in literary history. ​ As one of the most common tropes in the horror genre, the haunted house can either play a central role in the story or be a key character in and of itself, often anchoring the narrative and framing unfolding events. ​ Just as literature has evolved alongside changing societal norms, historical eras, political views, and attitud

Historical background The origins of Southern Gothic as a literary genre can be traced back to American Gothic, which itself arose from the European Gothic popularized in the closing years of the 18th century. Gothic literature uses settings such as remote, ancient, and gloomy environments -old manors, graveyards, haunted castles, and the like- to convey fear, isolation, and dread. Arguably, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto: a Gothic Story was the first purely Gothic w

There's a conflict in every human heart. Between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. If you're into cinema, you will immediately identify where that line comes from. In context, that short speech refers to how one man has reached his breaking point, how he has become unmoored from reality and lost any sense of decency, empathy, and mora

A distant bell tolls. Three women in mourning attire watch as their men lift a coffin into its sepulchre. Cue the psychedelic rock track from Acanthus, a graveyard in silhouette and a smoke machine and you will quickly see why The Shiver of the Vampires (Le Frisson des Vampires, 1971) is unequivocally A Product Of Its Time. If you like frumpy velvet outfits, the long takes of 70s French horror (the perfect antidote to the jarring cuts of the 60s New Wave), the verité of on-l