In December 2024, while you were probably looking forward to celebrating Christmas with your family, the weirdest emo you know simply couldn’t wait for Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu to be released. Since then, pop culture seems to have been following a specific trend and numerous adaptations of gothic fiction classics have been released in movie theaters this year. If the digital age has taught us something, it’s that if your art can create hype on TikTok or any other social media platform frequented by Gen Z, it’ll be big. In fact, if these platforms have shown us something over the past few months, it’s that gothic movies are an infinite resource for content. Avid social media users have inevitably fallen upon one of the Nosferatu parodic videos. Since the original Nosferatu movie was a silent film released in 1922, it is not surprising that Eggers’ 2024 version made waves by giving the vampire a new stache, an unsettling slow diction as well as a ridiculously loud breathing. The gothic epidemic clearly found its place in the social media landscape and if we needed further proof, it was announced that Emerald Fennell’s upcoming Wuthering Heights movie will feature a brand new Charli XCX album as its original soundtrack. After the worldwide success of her last album Brat released in June 2024, it seems as though everything she touches turns to gold. The newly coolest artist associating herself with the newly cool genre. Got it : gothic is where it’s at!
Beyond the parodies of Nosferatu’s vampire and the unseriousness of it all, the current worshiping of gothic movies is also based on a sincere appreciation for their exploration of the darkest areas of the human soul.
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu begins with a scene of Ellen, a young and freshly married woman played by Lily-Rose Depp, desperately calling out for someone in the dead of night, repeatedly whispering : “Come to me”. Consequently the response came from a vampire. Years later, the vampire returns to Ellen. Haunted and repulsed by the memories of their past liaison, she refuses him. If Ellen’s original consent seemed equivocal from the start, it’s when she states to the vampire : “I was but an innocent child” that it all becomes clearer. Eggers’ vampire is not simply an allegorical tool for sexual taboo and lust, as it’s usually the case in fiction, it represents the highest level of sexual transgression : paedophilia and grooming. The vampire’s abnormal canine teeth, repulsive long nails and cadaverous complexion distract us from the fact that this nonhuman being represents human corruption. In fact, gothic fiction has this unsettling habit of using its monsters to tell us about ourselves.
In Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), the depressed misanthrope vampire, Adam, explains his disdain for the “zombies and how they treat the world”. However, “Zombies” is the pejorative nickname he uses for humans. Highlighting the monstrosity of humans and humanising the non-humans : that’s what makes the Gothic supernatural not only spooky but introspective. Designed to give us chills, it can make us weep just as well. Its vampires and ghosts perfectly materialise our deepest traumas and moral failures, making gothic fiction an imaginative and aesthetic tool used to question our morality.
In Autumn 2025, Guillermo Del Toro released his adaptation of Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s famous 1818 book, a classic that serves as one of the best examples of a gothic examination of human failings.
Victor Frankenstein, a talented scientist, has the odd ambition to defeat death and wants to create a man by assembling the limbs and organs of several corpses, and artificially breathing life into him. He eventually succeeds, but as soon as his creation wakes up, Victor Frankenstein realises that his creation looks nothing like a proper human but rather like a monster. “Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room (…)”, wrote Shelley in Chapter Five. Repulsed by his creation, Frankenstein abandons his so-called monster.
By the end of Del Toro’s film, one line directed at Victor Frankenstein entirely summarises the moral of the story, in a way which arguably lacks a certain subtlety : “You are the monster”. It’s pronounced by Victor’s younger brother, William. When the creature eventually engages in barbaric behaviours to avenge himself, a circle of hatred initially started by his creator’s shameful abandonment is fulfilled. Responsible for the existence of the creature and for his foundational resentment towards all humans, Victor Frankenstein turns out to be the actual monster in common human fashion. The ordinary nature of his vices is even more obvious in Del Toro’s adaptation. In this version, Frankenstein’s abnormal presumptuousness is largely explained by his daddy issues. Mistreated by his father, he later goes on to mistreat his creation.
The story of Frankenstein features a science fiction plot based on fake inventions and impossible occurrences, yet manages to move the audience with its accurate depiction of relationship conflicts. Indeed, no such creature has even been made in real life, but many people can relate with the pain he feels for being rejected by his creator, or for being attacked because of his physical peculiarity. Indeed all throughout the story, the creature is hunted and seen as a predator by humans, all because of his threatening monster-like appearance. Unaware of his abnormality, and therefore unaware of the motive for his constant rejection, the creature is convinced that humans are inherently evil.
The biggest change that Del Toro makes to the original story is that Victor eventually apologises to his creature. By choosing to offer his titular character a redemption arc, Del Toro opts for a less pessimistic ending. He also opts to build a different story for the character of Elizabeth, played by Mia Goth. In his adaptation she’s the creature’s first friend while she isn’t aware of Frankenstein’s creation and remains a secondary character in Shelley’s book. Contrary to Victor, she is never repulsed by the creature, but rather fascinated. When Victor tries to shoot the creature, she puts herself in front of the latter to protect him, dying this way, in a final act of love for him.
Gothic fiction’s moral teachings are not that all humans are necessarily or completely corrupted and evil. As much as it illustrates how humans are capable of the worst atrocities, it also shows that we are capable of empathy, of feeling guilt, and of remorse. If many gothic monsters represent an absolute and irredeemable evil, such as Nosferatu’s vampire, many others symbolise less black and white behaviour patterns. And of course, there have to be good zombies among us as well.
“For a zombie, you’re alright”
–Adam to Ian, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013).