History Main / SouthernGothic

* The 1955 movie ''Film/TheNightOfTheHunter'', set in rural West Virginia with a Bible-thumping serial killer as an antagonist, is an early and iconic film example.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'''s Point Lookout DLC could qualify for this, as it's an area crawling with mutant hicks, radioactive swamps, and deadly conspiracies.

The creepy, gothic version of the rural Southern United States. Scenes show dying vegetation, decaying plantations, rusty farm implements, foreboding swamps with ''something'' lurking within, and frighteningly expressionless folk standing around doing...nothing, except staring at the protagonists.

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* The [adult swim] series ''Series/TheHeartSheHoller'' wallows in the clichés of the genre, gleefully cranking the trashiness and degeneracy UpToEleven.

* While many of Creator/CormacMcCarthy'a most famous works are more SinisterSouthwest than this, his first several novels were all set in UsefulNotes/{{Appalachia}} and dipped deeply into Southern Gothic themes. Given that [=McCarthy=] grew up in Tennessee and was majorly influenced by William Faulkner, this makes perfect sense.

* ''{{ComicBook/Harrow County}}'' is the epitome of this trope, with its rural southern setting, witch protagonist, and supporting cast of EldritchAbominations and other supernatural entities.

* ''Film/EvesBayou'' is a drama based on affairs with a hint of the supernatural. It takes place in a Louisiana setting.

%%* ''ComicBook/SwampThing''%%

%%* ''{{ComicBook/Harrow County}}'' is the epitome of this trope.%%How?%%

%%* The 1972 horror film ''Literature/TheOther'', along with the book it was based on. Set in HollywoodNewEngland during 1935, and starring CreepyTwins Niles and Holland Perry, it features old, decaying buildings, sun-parched yet oddly idyllic scenery, and horrible secrets.%%New England isn't Southern%%

* Creator/CarsonMcCullers' stories and novels, mostly published in the 1940s, are soaked in this and helped codify the genre. She once accused Harper Lee of "poaching on her preserve".

* After Faulkner, Creator/FlanneryOConnor was pretty much the queen of the Southern Gothic. Absolutely everything she wrote fits soundly within the genre, though she herself may have disagreed; she once wrote that "[a]nything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."
* ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'' has elements of this, as well as being set in the DeepSouth.
** Creator/CarsonMcCullers' stories are soaked in this. She once accused Harper Lee of "poaching on her preserve".

* Though he was born in [[LovecraftCountry Boston]], Creator/EdgarAllanPoe spent much of his life in Virginia and Baltimore and essentially ''lived'' this trope. While his stories themselves often have ambiguous or abstract settings, "Literature/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher" checks a lot of the thematic boxes--[[ImpoverishedPatrician aristocrats in decline]], an all-pervading sense of physical and spiritual decay, isolation, insanity, and yes, incest.[[note]] The location of the titular house above a "tarn," which is a postglacial lake or pond, suggests northern Europe or New England, but Poe may not have been using the term in the strict sense. Slightly harder to square with an American setting is the fact that the mansion has apparently existed "since remote feudal times."[[/note]]

* Though he was born in [[LovecraftCountry Boston]], Creator/EdgarAllanPoe spent much of his life in Virginia and Baltimore and essentially ''lived'' this trope. While his stories themselves often have ambiguous or abstract settings, "Literature/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher" checks a lot of the thematic boxes--[[ImpoverishedPatrician aristocrats in decline]], an all-pervading sense of physical and spiritual decay, isolation, insanity, and yes, incest.[[note]] The location of the titular house above a "tarn," which is a postglacial lake or pond, suggests northern Europe or New England, but Poe may not have been using the term in the strict sense.[[/note]]

This trope is deeply rooted in American history. For most of civilization fabric tended to be either uncomfortable (wool, linen) or very expensive (silk), and for early adopters, cotton farming was like being able to grow gold. However, soil degradation and the development of overseas competition caused profits to plummet, and many Southern families built mansions only to find them impossible to maintain. As a result, the South became littered with decrepit properties occupied by bitter, [[RichesToRags downwardly-mobile]] planters. These symbols of ruined aristocracy, combined with the insular and rigid structure of the suffering families, inspired the genre's themes of physical and social decay.

The themes of moral decay are, of course, informed by the American institution of slavery, which was intrinsic to the culture and economy of the antebellum South. Nobody could remain unaffected by this systemic evil, even if they did not directly participate. SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil, and writers are hard-pressed to imagine any supernatural horror that does not pale in comparison to the the Real Life abuses inflicted under it. In a historical setting where it is still in force, the worst of it may be hidden, but paranoia reigns as the place is implicitly filled with angry ghosts and living monsters. A century after its abolition, a Southern Gothic setting may invoke the history of slavery to kindle fear that the ghosts are still angry, that the land itself is stained by the sins committed there. A common character in these kind of stories is their own representation of {{Satan}} in the form of SouthernGothicSatan.

* Daniel Woodrell--author of the books [[TheFilmOfTheBook which were adapted into]] the films ''Film/WintersBone'' and ''Film/RideWithTheDevil''--usually puts out Southern Gothic-adjacent work.

The Southern Gothic is its own subgenre of [[GothicHorror Gothic media]], characterized by bleak settings in the DeepSouth, flawed (and often disturbing) characters, and the darker side of the South including racism, sexism, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and]] BarefootPoverty. If you're in Louisiana, HollywoodVoodoo might make an appearance.

The themes of moral decay are, of course, informed by the American institution of slavery, which was intrinsic to the culture and economy of the antebellum South. No-one could remain unaffected by this systemic evil, even if they did not participate (for example lower-class whites, who did not own slaves but were doomed to crushing poverty by it). SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil, and writers are hard-pressed to imagine any supernatural horror that does not pale in comparison to the the Real Life abuses inflicted under it. In a historical setting where it is still in force the worst of it may be hidden, but paranoia reigns as the place is implicitly filled with angry ghosts and living monsters. A century after its abolition, a Southern Gothic setting may invoke the history of slavery to kindle fear that the ghosts are still angry, that the land itself is stained by the sins committed there. A common character in these kind of stories is their own representation of {{Satan}} in the form of SouthernGothicSatan.

* ''Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre'' is a Southern Gothic SlasherMovie, complete with a big decaying house inhabited by a family of HillbillyHorrors. The subsequent films in the series qualify to varying degrees as well.

%%* ''Film/TheDevilAllTheTime.''

* ''Film/WintersBone'': The setting is an unfriendly, twisted town with an eerie swamp full of twisted decay nearby. There are also supernatural elements, and bits of folklore and legend are woven into the novel.

* ''Film/WintersBone'': The setting is an unfriendly, twisted town with an eerie swamp full of twisted decay nearby. There are also supernatural elements, and bits of folklore and legend are woven into the novel.

* ''Film/TheBeguiled'' is set entirely in a Southern plantation house/women's seminary in the midst of the Civil War, and deals with the tensions [[spoiler: and eventually violence]] which are stirred up when a wounded Union soldier is laid up there.

* ''Film/TheBeguiled''

* ''Film/TheWaterboy'' is comedic example where the decay and depressing state of the world is used to highlight Bobby's cheerful and optimistic demeanor.

* ''Film/TheHauntedMansion'' invokes this aesthetic, with its empty and decaying plantation-style house surrounded by swamps. The racist history of the South is also lightly touched on, with [[spoiler: a [[ForbiddenLove doomed romance]] between [[BlackGalOnWhiteGuyDrama the house's white owner and a black woman]], sabotaged by the [[TheButlerDidIt scheming butler]].]]

* The 1955 movie ''Film/TheNightOfTheHunter'', set in rural West Virginia with a Bible-thumping serial killer as an antagonist, is an early and iconic film example.
* Creator/JohnHuston's 1979 adaptation of Creator/FlanneryOConnor's classic Southern Gothic novel ''Literature/WiseBlood'' is itself a classic of the genre on film.

* The 1955 movie ''Film/TheNightOfTheHunter'', set in rural West Virginia with a Bible-thumping serial killer as an antagonist, is an early and classic film example.

* ''Film/TheHauntedMansion'' invokes this aesthetic, with its empty and decaying plantation-style house surrounded by swamps.

* The ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' episode "The Forbidden Fountain of the Foreverglades!" has the Duck family going to Florida to look for a FoutainOfYouth, crossing paths with Scrooge's old enemies from the past who have now turned to zombie-like beings (one freed from being cryogenically frozen and the other now a FrankensteinsMonster). [[spoiler:Oh, and said fountain actually transfers youth instead of granting it, as was discovered by a hotel owner who is a really a 500-year-old conquistador who had been stealing the youths of innocent people by using the fountain's waters for the hotel's swimming pool.]]

** Carson [=McCullers=]' stories are soaked in this. She once accused Harper Lee of "poaching on her preserve".