In this past award season many stars adopted youthful, stylized features often modeled after the Lindsay Lohan look, showcasing Hollywood’s obsession with visual perfection. Not an uncommon occurrence in Hollywood, but this focus is now seeping into performances. Cosmetic enhancements like botox are hindering facial expression, making the acting feel subdued.
The focus on visuals are also appearing in many recent Gothic adaptations like Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and Dracula. These movies are visually gorgeous but have failed in showcasing the depth of their original work.
Frankenstein, directed by del Toro, leads as the closest adaptation to the book, but it left out a major plot point. The monster wasn’t just a victim but was a villain. In the movie the monster is portrayed as innocent and blameless, but in the book, it murders many people just to anger its creator.
The choice of a blameless monster is most likely due to del Toro’s commentary on the dangers of ambition, and how tech CEOs are evil. Meanwhile, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was about how a monster that was created to be human can be sympathetic but also choose evil. Literary Frankenstein is more complex by commenting on how humans can fuel evil without realizing it.
In the same vein, Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell, took it a step further by removing the most important trait of its main protagonist, his ethnicity. Heathcliff, the character that drives the plot, was stripped of his main theme from the book to turn him into a symbol of desire in the movie.
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was uncomfortable because it portrayed obsession, class and violence in a way that was never portrayed for the 1800s. In fact, when first published, it only received negative reviews. Even now, when I ask readers their opinions of it, many did not like it.
One almost feels hesitant when reading Wuthering Heights. Yet in the 2026 adaptation, Heathcliff is portrayed as romantic, when in reality he was disturbing. The focus in the adaptation is a stylized obsession and violence that is desired.
Even Dracula has been stripped of its original intent. The story was rooted in a fear of the foreign and fear of the unknown, but many adaptations have turned it into a love story. The literary Dracula never had a wife, and he was not sympathetic.
Dracula was meant to stay mostly unknown. The deeper meaning of all these movies, although not gone, are being overshadowed by something marketable.
The problem is the economic choices these directors take to stay relevant in the mainstream. Instead of just selling movies with in-depth themes, they must also stand out as unique.
Now that the visual media is dominated by streaming, algorithms and global audiences, studios choose the visual aesthetics and sacrifice other aspects to keep the general public entertained. A faithful adaptation runs the risk of being overlooked, while a bold interpretation garners more clicks, and ultimately profit. Just like actors trying to stay relevant by having work done, the discomfort and moral ambiguity of these stories are being hidden to create something beautiful, but hollow. In the end the Gothic revival is less about reviving these stories, and more about reshaping them.
by Destiny Velasco
