List

Gothic Movies

By Sharon Weinberg

While reading the book Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, I started to think about movies. Here are some suggestions for gothic horror, noir, romance, and southern. Enjoy!

  • Beasts of the Southern Wild

    2012

    Six-year-old Hushpuppy says that "The whole universe depends on everything fitting together." And now her world is breaking apart. With an environmental crisis looming, she races against time to save her ailing father and their remote Louisiana bayou neighborhood from disaster. This southern gothic movie pushes the standard with its gorgeous visuals, dreamy sequences of magical realism, and an Oscar-nominated performance from young Quvenzhané Wallis as Hushpuppy.

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  • Crimson Peak

    2016

    Set at the turn-of-the century, the story follows Edith, an American heiress and successful author. After a whirlwind romance, she accompanies her new husband Thomas to his family home in Cumberland. It’s a dilapidated mansion that is sinking into the red clay underneath, with a less-than-welcoming sister as its keeper. Of course there are terrifying secrets and a chilling purpose for Edith's presence. Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro calls this a ghost story and gothic romance that is meant to honor the great women of the haunted house genre. As one comes to expect from del Toro's films, the special effects are amazing.

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  • El Espinazo del Diablo: The Devil's Backbone

    2013

    Filmed in 2001, this is Guillermo del Toro's third feature movie, a gothic horror story that takes place in 1939 Spain, during the final days of the Spanish Civil War. When his father dies in the fighting, Carlos is relocated to an isolated orphanage. There, he sees the ghost of a boy haunting the grounds and slowly discovers the truth of the imminent danger to all who live there. File it under a spine-tingling reveal. In Spanish with English subtitles.

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  • Wuthering Heights

    2009

    Many people love the 1939 version with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier as the star-crossed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff. I'm giving a shout out to the PBS Masterpiece production directed by Coky Giedroyc, starring Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy. If you're in the mood for a gothic tragedy, this works. Also, despite the fate of Cathy and Heathcliff's romance, Riley and Hardy got married in real life.

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  • Eve's Bayou

    2002

    A compelling example of southern gothic storytelling, filmmaker Kasi Lemmons crafted a haunting drama about family secrets and their devastating impact. This won two Independent Spirit Awards: Best First Feature and Best Supporting Female for Debbi Morgan.

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  • Gaslight

    2004

    What does it mean to "gaslight" someone? Watch this movie and you'll know. Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar playing a recently-wed woman who becomes convinced that she's slowly losing her mind after she and her husband move into the sprawling Victorian home where her beloved aunt was murdered years before. It's noir gothic at its best.

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  • The Haunting

    2001

    Adapted from Shirley Jackson's gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House and directed by Robert Wise, this film stars Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, who turn in stellar performances as two women participating in a paranormal investigation. This 1963 movie might be more for film bluffs, but its influence is far reaching.

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  • Jane Eyre

    2011

    Filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga deftly brings to screen Charlotte Bronte's much-loved gothic novel about an orphaned young woman with limited means. Jane Eyre accepts the position of governess at the secluded Thornfield Hall and becomes dangerously entangled with her wealthy, secretive employer, Edward Rochester. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender absolutely have the right chemistry for this timeless story.

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  • Northanger Abbey

    2008

    Based on the book by Jane Austen, the author cleverly parodies gothic literature with her protagonist Catherine Morland, a devotee of the genre who takes Ann Radcliffe's novel The Mysteries of Udolpho to heart. Felicity Jones stars and Andrew Davies wrote the screenplay--two more reasons to add this to your watch list.

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  • Nosferatu

    2000

    Certainly there have been many adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula through the years. Perhaps the 1992 movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola is your favorite. Nonetheless, this unauthorized 1922 German silent film, directed by F.W. Murnau and featuring Max Schreck as the shadowy vampire, is definitely a gothic standout.

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  • The Orphanage

    2008

    This gothic supernatural horror movie was directed by J.A. Bayona (his feature debut) from an original screenplay by Sergio G. Sánchez, with Guillermo del Toro as producer. Laura, along with her husband Carlos and their seven-year-old son Simon, returns to the orphanage where she once lived, intending to reopen the facility as a home for disabled children. When Simon goes missing, they begin to realize that his disappearance has a connection to events that happened decades before. It is a slow burn of atmospheric tension. In Spanish with English subtitles.

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  • The Others

    2002

    Writer and director Alejandro Amenábar did well to cast Nicole Kidman as the lead in this gothic horror supernatural mystery. She is unforgettable as Grace, a mother of two photosensitive children staying in an old country house in Jersey at the end of WWII. However, there may be "others" there as well.

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  • Rebecca

    2001

    Wealthy widower Maxim de Winter has a new wife. Too bad she's tormented by the memory of his first wife, the seemingly perfect Rebecca. Based on the acclaimed novel by Daphne du Maurier and directed by the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, this classic gothic tale packs a wallop. Interestingly, though we never see Rebecca, her invisible spirit is present in every scene!

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  • Winter's Bone

    2010

    Directed by Debra Granik, starring Jennifer Lawrence in a breakout performance. This intense southern gothic mystery focuses on 17-year-old Ree as she desperately navigates her way through the unwritten rules of the brutal meth subculture in the Missouri Ozarks, trying to find her missing father before she, her younger siblings, and ill mother lose their home.

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