Essays

Horror might not be the first genre people think of when they’re looking for comfort. By its very nature, it’s meant to evoke unease and dread, if not outright fear….

Only a lucky few can say they were au courant during goth music’s initial spawning from post-punk in the late 1970s. As an 80’s kid, I was only peripherally aware of bands like The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. I wouldn’t “discover” the likes of Joy Division or Suicide until my teen years while playing the CD of The Crow soundtrack on repe

Three girls in a car are challenged to a drag race by two guys. The girls accept, and the race is on. The two vehicles speed through town, out into a rural area, and across a wooden bridge. The cars are driving side by side when the girls’ vehicle breaks through the railing and plunges into the river below, while the boys drive off unharmed.

The first gothic story I remember falling in love with was The Phantom of the Opera. At the time, we lived in San Francisco. My dad was a surgical resident, my mom newly turned stay-at-home, having quit her job at an architecture firm to care for me and my younger brother. We didn’t have many indulgences, but one thing my parents did, when they could afford to, was take us to see musicals.

Multiverses are having a moment—from the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s recent excursions to Everything Everywhere All at Once to countless cartoons and video games and comics—and I couldn’t be happier about…

Two movies released when I was eighteen years old. One was The Crow, and the other was Pulp Fiction. One changed my life; the other was by Quentin Tarantino.

The past few years have seen a resurgence of the Gothic subgenre, but one that reimagines well-known themes, and moves the stories to fresh, new settings.