Gothic!

I’ve mentioned before that I’m going to have a story in Candle in the Attic Window, coming September 20th from Innsmouth Free Press (20% off pre-sale starting September 5th), but I wanted to talk about it again. I’m really excited about this anthology, and not just because the story in it is one of the best I’ve done, in my opinion. I’m excited about it because it’s a theme that’s nearer and dearer to my heart than just about any other anthology I’ve done so far. That theme, of course, is Gothic fiction.

What makes something Gothic can be a difficult thing to define or pin down, and one of the reasons I’m excited about Candle in the Attic Window is that I’m excited to see how all the other contributors defined Gothic for themselves. For me, my story is an homage to those great Vincent Price/Roger Corman Poe adaptations, and all the movies like them. But there’s a million different ways that the Gothic sensibility can find its way into a story, without just resorting to women in nightgowns holding candlesticks on the lawns of English manors. (Not that I don’t have a soft spot for those, too.)

One of the movies that I’m most looking forward to this year is the remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro and directed by former comic artist Troy Nixey. And one of the reasons that I’m looking so forward to it (besides the obvious, plus monsters) is that it looks so delightfully Gothic. A few years ago del Toro helped shepherd onto American shores another incredible, incredibly Gothic film in the form of The Orphanage. And now the recently revived Hammer films have unveiled the teaser trailer for their forthcoming re-adaptation of The Woman in Black, and, well, see for yourself:

Between all those and some other stuff like, say, the recent version of Jane Eyre (was that any good? did anyone see it?) and I think I’ll be excused for at least hoping that we’re looking at something of a renaissance in Gothic horror films. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed on the subject, at least. Here’s to hoping that those I haven’t seen yet are as good as they look, and that, if they are, they do well enough that studios feel compelled to greenlight more.