What Lies Beneath: A focus on Gothic Conventions in Horror Films

As the highest grossing Horror/Thriller title in the US, I thought it would be beneficial to research the film 'What Lies Beneath', namely to find out what conventions and themes made it so popular and sucessful.

The Gothic: Gothic novels provide the conventions necessary to invoke bone shuddering horror and terror. With the well known features being noticeable in the film the audience is shocked and scared at every new discovery (or false discovery).

The film is literally littered with Gothic features; blood, concealment (The affair), corruption, death (villains human form's suicide),  documents (the newspaper article), flickering candles, mist, mirrors, monsters, mutilations,revenge, sex, villains, the young vulnerable woman, the young seductress and corrupter all this and more appear in the film, helping to create the sense of unease and terror in the audience.

The gothic concepts that are utilized in the film include but are not limited to:

Horror     

Horror is the fear generated by a physical shock actually seen or experienced e.g. blood, death etc.

There are plenty of examples of the horrific in the film, the decaying corpse of Madison grabbing Norman in the lake, Norman covered in blood after slipping in the bathroom. The horrific image of Madison's corpse creates the extreme fear in the audience as it is not something so foreign from us as to be unrecognisable and the fact that we will all take on a similar appearance one day is what confounds that fear.

Terror

Terror is a fear generated through the uncertain or obscure, something that is hinted as being sinister or perceived as insubstantial but still there, preying on the imagination of the audience.

'What Lies Beneath' utilizes the power of terror to great effect throughout. Mist creates that sense of the unknown, shrouding everything inside of it and leaving the audience to their imaginations of what is portrayed through it. The spirit Claire come's into contact with generates terror as the actions are ambigious and never explained clearly, leaving them open to interpretation and each member of the audience building their own individual fears of what the purpose could be.

 The simple phrase "You Know" seemingly breaks the fourth wall of cinema as if it is a direct message to the audience, whilst also being discrete as to not give away much, giving the feeling that no one watching is truly safe from the spirit and creating a sense of mystery and intrigue.

The Sublime

The sublime lends itself to marry aspects of terror in order to truly submerge itself in the minds of the audience, it is the sense of astonishment, awe, being overwhelmed by someone or something that we ourselves can not fully comprehend, whether it be a monstrous entity, landscape, vast power or simply an emotion. As the spirit begins to cause Havoc in Claire's Home she is overcome by the sublimity of her fear and so dabbles in the unknown arts of conducting a seance, a practice not commonly employed in society therefore attracting the character and audience to it's powers creating awe by all who bear witness to it.                       (pictured above: Claire engaging her fear through a seance)

Oppositions, Otherness and The Doppelganger

( Pictured left: Norman, seemingly sane but full of   madness, a key opposition in the film)

Oppositions play a key role in the genre as they are challenged and often shown to collapse, displaying the audiences pre-determined views of them being totally indifferent from one another as a falsity. Popular oppositions explored in the film include male/female, sanity/madness, past/present and living/dead. 

Otherness is anything which is different from ourselves and yet also has an air of familiarity to it making it appear threatening to us, the fear originates from the fact despite it's differences whether these be physical or mental we can see ourselves in this "other", and the resolve to not become what we are presented with is born through this fear.

(Pictured above: Claire and Madison, an example of how scary an other or doppelganger can be.)

The Doppelganger is a double that takes on the appearance of the mirror image or alter ego of a character, revealing the negative energy, desires or traits of the individual in a magnified way. It is common belief that seeing ones own doppelganger is an omen of death, this concept is flipped on it's head in the film however as Norman see's his wifes doppelganger and not his own yet he is the one that ends up dead and not her.

The Revenant

Typical folklore suggests the revenant to be a visible ghost or resurrected corpse brought back to the realm of the living through a strong emotion or action (revenge, justice, etc.) however the gothic describes it to be anything that keeps coming back from the past, this can include evil deeds, fears or individuals. What Lies Beneath combines the revenantal apsect of Norman's affair and murder with the form of Madison as both return to ruin his life. This is the prominent theme of the film as the underlying message is that whatever you do, you will not escape the past.


To conclude it is safe to theorise that these gothic elements while not singularly responsible for the success of "What Lies Beneath" do have a positive correlation to the acclaim and value the film gained from the consumer fan base. The elements used managed to accentuate certain plot points in the production and produced the eeriness so often associated with good horror films. Because of this the film manages to distance itself from the banality present in so many horror films of the 90's by successfully using and bending the core laws of all horror, the Gothic.