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David Punter and Glennis Byron note how the Gothic novel has been divided into two categories: the ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ Gothic. Where the former emphasizes violence and ghosts, the latter focuses on female representation and the disavowal of the supernatural. The Hollywood Gothic films of the 1940s can be said to translate this aspect of the Female Gothic onto the cinema screen: Rebecca (1940), Gaslight (1944) and Secret Beyond the Door (1947) all feature narratives stressing the haunting nature of domestic spaces but there are no actual ghosts present. Robert Zemeckis’s What Lies Beneath (2000) breaks this convention. The film clearly draws on the Female Gothic lineage, situating Claire as a Gothic heroine, and yet there is an important difference: the supernatural is now an integral – and acknowledged – part of the story. This chapter explores this twenty-first century change, arguing that whilst the inclusion of the supernatural can be said to break with previous definitions of the Female Gothic, What Lies Beneath’s depiction of a ghost actually re-imagines and re-emphasizes the concerns at the centre of this tradition: the dramatization of marital and domestic experiences; an interrogation of feminine perception; and the reality of male violence against women.

Since the Millennium, the world of TV horror has radically altered. Aided by newer production methods including streaming, downloading and narrowcasting, programmes like The Waking Dead, American Horror Story, Penny Dreadful and the reinvention of Doctor Who have shown how resilient the horror genre is to both television formats and platforms.

This conclusion ties together the chapters, whilst offering the idea that much more work is needed to fully comprehend the importance of gender studies linked to horror television.

Since the turn of the Millennium, horror has had a resurgence both in cinema and in television. With programmes like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer paving the way for other horror shows such as The Walking Dead, American Horror Story and Penny Dreadful, this introduction discusses the way that TV has become a bedrock of new, exciting, vibrant and bold horror productions.