American Eco-Gothic Horror: Between Self-Reflexive Ecocriticism and Ecophobia

Original research article; reviewed material; received: 2025.05.20; reviewed: 2025.07.11; accepted: 2025.08.05

Natasza Korczarowska

natasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X

Abstract

This article challenges Simon Estok’s claim that ecophobia activates anti-environmental attitudes and incites hostility towards nature. The author argues that in contemporary American eco-gothic horror films, ecophobia works to “re-enchant” nature and restore its agency. Eco-gothic horror films are analysed in the context of Estok’s ecophobia hypothesis, Matthew Wynn Sivils’s vegetal haunting, and Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject. The author distinguishes between the concepts of eco-gothic and eco-horror (as well as folk horror). In films belonging to the latter subgenre, nature turns against humanity in revenge for environmental degradation. In the eco-gothic subgenre, the theme of nature’s “revenge” does not appear, and the vegetative world evokes a mood of the uncanny and the Kantian experience of the sublime. According to the author, the Gothic (in its idiomatic “forest” version) is the foundation of American identity.


Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Keywords:

ecophobia, vegetal haunting, trauma, uncanny

Baudrillard, J. (2011). Ameryka (tłum. R. Lis). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sic!.
  Google Scholar

Cixous, H. (1993). Śmiech Meduzy (tłum. A. Nasiłowska). Teksty Drugie, (4-5-6), ss. 147-166.
  Google Scholar

Corstorphine, K. (2013). „The Blank Darkness Outside”: Ambrose Bierce and Wilderness Gothic at the End of the Frontier. W: A. Smith, W. Hughes (red.), Ecogothic (ss. 120-133). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  Google Scholar

Estok, S. C. (2018). The Ecophobia Hypothesis. New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315144689   Google Scholar

Faulkner, W. (1997). Niedźwiedź (tłum. Z. Kieszys). W: W. Faulkner, Wielki las (ss. 9-95). Warszawa: Unia Wydawnicza „Verum”.
  Google Scholar

Gatta, J. (2004). Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/0195165055.001.0001   Google Scholar

Hillard, T. J. (2013). From Salem Witch to Blair Witch: The Puritan Influence on American Gothic Nature. W: A. Smith, W. Hughes (red.), Ecogothic (ss. 103-119). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  Google Scholar

Keetley, D. (2016). Introduction: Six Theses on Plant Horror; Or, Why Are Plants Horrifying?. W: D. Keetley, A. Tenga (red.), Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film (ss. 1-30). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57063-5_1   Google Scholar

Krakauer, J. (2021). Wszystko za życie (tłum. R. Lisowski). Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne.
  Google Scholar

Kristeva, J. (2007). Potęga obrzydzenia. Esej o wstręcie (tłum. M. Falski). Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.
  Google Scholar

Laist, R. (2016). Sartre and the Roots of Plant Horror. W: D. Keetley, A. Tenga (red.), Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film (ss. 163-178). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57063-5_9   Google Scholar

McCarthy, C. (2009). Dziecię boże (tłum. A. Kołyszko). Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
  Google Scholar

Morton, T. (2007). Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  Google Scholar

Morton, T. (2010). The Ecological Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674056732   Google Scholar

Muir, J. (1997). Nature Writings. New York: The Library of America.
  Google Scholar

Nash, R. (2001). Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  Google Scholar

Parker, E. (2020). The Forest and the EcoGothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35154-0   Google Scholar

Sivils, M. W. (2018). Vegetal Haunting: The Gothic Plant in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. W: D. Keetley, M. W. Sivils (red.), Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (ss. 161-174). New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315464930-11   Google Scholar

Specht, R. (2013). Pojęcie wzniosłości w filozofii Kanta. Studia z Historii Filozofii, (2), ss. 167-184.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12775/szhf.2013.025   Google Scholar

Tuan, Y.-F. (2013). Landscapes of Fear. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  Google Scholar


Published
2025-09-30

Cited by

Korczarowska, N. (2025) “American Eco-Gothic Horror: Between Self-Reflexive Ecocriticism and Ecophobia”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (131), pp. 31–56. doi: 10.36744/kf.4475.

Authors

Natasza Korczarowska 
natasza.korczarowska@uni.lodz.pl
University of Lodz Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3130-128X

Professor at the Department of Film and Audiovisual Media, Institute of Contemporary Culture, University of Lodz. She specializes in the history of Polish film, contemporary European cinema, and the problems of historiophoty. She published the books Ojczyzny prywatne [Private Homelands] (2007) and Inne spojrzenie [Another Way] (2013) – the latter devoted to the images of history in the Polish feature film after 1965. Since 2008 she has cooperated with the Polish Film Institute and the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute on the educational project Academy of Polish Film.



Statistics

Abstract views: 22
PDF downloads: 17


License

Copyright (c) 2025 Natasza Korczarowska

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.

In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.


Most read articles by the same author(s)

1 2 > >>