Any piece of classical gothic media, be it film or a novel will immediately kindle this juxtaposition of light and darkness. If there’s a haunted castle there will always be something quaint and domestic and if there’s a brooding supernatural being there will almost always be a do-gooder protagonist, who’s mortal. This isn’t the only mould that cuts the flesh of gothic fiction, but it sets up the precedent of what it mostly is. Additionally, the gothic is a departure from the romantic sentiment; there’s no ideal marriage or reunion and a ribbon that ties it all together. It has the benefit of harbouring society’s taboo truths, with its occult appearance and suffocating aesthetics. Yet is good and evil clearly cut into moulds; is it always light and darkness? The renaissance of Gothic media might have the answer.
I think there’s this sentiment expressed in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a sentiment that questions, who is the monster and who is the man. This chain of thought seemed to be the obvious bias in Guillermo Del Toro’s 2025 Frankenstein. Thought I’d start here, after Jacob Elordi’s recent win at the Critics’ Choice Awards. At the heart of this adaptation, there’s the monster and the creator, or that’s the impression we’re spoon fed for a few minutes. Then it comes undone. Oscar Issac is the vicious and power-hungry Viktor Frankenstein, haunted by death from the get-go. Toro hangs an omen of death above him and lets it hover around for much of the story. Then, there’s the surprise, Jacob Elordi’s The Creature. His definitive performance as the creation, is one that pulls you into the missing pieces of Viktor’s narrative. In Toro’s approach, The Creature is the gentle but aggressive, born out of ambition and the thirst for knowledge. To an extent they are mirrors. Toro fixes the story on this dynamic; the creator and the creation; the man and monster. There’s also something deeply poetic but gutting in the extensions of the family curse. Viktor’s father is who you see in Viktor, an abuser who hovers a cruel hand over his son’s life and you can see the lost innocence of Viktor in Elordi’s Creature. It’s ultimately a harrowing narrative about abuse and it’s repercussions.
The Gothic genre doesn’t always pinpoint to a single individual villain. It points to an overarching issue within society that afflicts everyone that inhabits it. As a genre, it has always had a focus on the women; the unwilling victims, the lonely wives and lovers. Robert Eggers dived headfirst into this narrative with his debut feature The Witch, which came full circle with his recent release, Nosferatu. The film pulls at the underbelly of society’s paranoia and malpractices. Eggers captures a landscape that isolates its women and imprisons them in that cold cruelty. The women are loveless, alone and dismissed. In life they are gentle and submissive, without agency; in death they are the victims of their husbands’ possessiveness and vulgarity. Bill Skarsgard’s Count Orlok is the embodiment of evil, possessing Lilly Rose Depp’s Ellen, he’s the standard gothic caricature. Yet, there are also monsters who wear top hats, structured coats and stiff collars; embodied by Aaron Taylor Johnsons’ Friedrich Harding.
As a genre, the Gothic was always reserved for a certain landscape; mysterious castles, woodlands and atmospheres vaguely inspired by Europe. This halters the progression of the genre and centralises most of its fiction in something monotonous or monochromatic. The concept of vampires or anything remotely gothic is inspired by European folklore and superstitions. Ryan Coogler recontextualises real world themes with the gothic in his recent movie, Sinners. As an audience, we’re pulled out of the cold greys and thrown into the fires. It’s bold, expressive and it takes the lore that we know and paints it new. The film is lively in its music, with the rhythm of blues fleshing out some of the most pivotal moments of the story. It’s not a story about vampires. It’s a story of a history that has rarely amplified the voices of marginalized individuals. It’s Coogler’s re-examination of a history and a genre altogether; that goes beyond the aesthetics of Gothic. It’s not what we’d call gothic, but the sentiment echoes through every inch of it.
Perhaps it started with the inherent charm of Tom Hiddleston in Crimson Peak or maybe the genre had always been an interesting one, with landscape motifs, the unexplainable; a far cry from artifice and glamour. The gothic genre is looking at a potential comeback, adaptation waiting in the wings. And it’s the truth that draws us in, the truth about their monsters and the world around us. As an audience, we’re gripped by the reality of things, shocked and unnerved by the monsters. And in this Gothic renaissance, the monsters are just human.
Image: Klim Musalimov via Unsplash