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The Nature Of Gothic Horror

Fear is at the heart of every Gothic, but it is not born of shock and gory detail. Modern horror may routinely slice, dice, and disembowel its victims to create fear. But Gothic horror relies on subtler techniques. It teases and taunts its victims unrelentingly, with terrors shrouded in mist. By the time their true nature is clear, death by an ordinary knife would seem a relief.

In a slasher film, the question is not so much what will happen as when. When the story ends, the world will again be mundane, if only you can avoid the maniac in the closet with the cleaver. But in a tale of Gothic horror, “what” will happen is something sinister and unknown. A sense of danger and foreboding permeates the atmosphere. A dark mystery underlies the horrors, and---despite all warnings to the contrary---the characters are compelled to unravel it. These “innocents” are trapped in a whirlpool of conflicting emotion---driven by a desire to experience the awful truths they sense are real, and dreading it all the while. With each step, they discover that the world is larger and more twisted than they once supposed, and that man is necessarily small, helpless, and naïve.


	Stephen And Tracy's Home Page Back Forward The Nature Of Gothic Horror Fear is at the heart of every Gothic, but it is not born of shock and gory detail. Modern horror may routinely slice, dice, and disembowel its victims to create fear. But Gothic horror relies on subtler techniques. It teases and taunts its victims unrelentingly, with terrors shrouded in mist. By the time their true nature is clear, death by an ordinary knife would seem a relief. In a slasher film, the question is not so much what will happen as when. When the story ends, the world will again be mundane, if only you can avoid the maniac in the closet with the cleaver. But in a tale of Gothic horror, “what” will happen is something sinister and unknown. A sense of danger and foreboding permeates the atmosphere. A dark mystery underlies the horrors, and---despite all warnings to the contrary---the characters are compelled to unravel it. These “innocents” are trapped in a whirlpool of conflicting emotion---driven by a desire to experience the awful truths they sense are real, and dreading it all the while. With each step, they discover that the world is larger and more twisted than they once supposed, and that man is necessarily small, helpless, and naïve.