My Gothic Cinema Personal Curriculum (And Why You Should Make Your Own)
If you've read about the personal curriculum trend, then you know the magic of learning something just because you want to. No grades. No certificates. Just pure, unadulterated curiosity.
I made a personal curriculum. And it's been a blast.
It Started With Page-Turners
I didn't sit down and ask myself "What would my inner child want to learn?" That's a great question, but mine started simpler: What books have I actually finished lately? Not because I had to, but because I couldn't stop?
The answer: Frankenstein and Dracula.
I devoured them. Not for any reason. Not to seem well-read at dinner parties. I just genuinely needed to know what happened next. The monsters, the atmosphere, the way both books take their time building dread. I was hooked.
That's Gothic fiction. And apparently, I love it.
The Reading Problem
Here's the thing about being an adult with responsibilities: reading novels for pleasure is really easy to put on the back burner. Since it doesn't have to get done, it doesn't get done.
I really would like to read more Gothic literature. In fact, Wuthering Heights is sitting on a shelf in my office, patiently waiting for my attention. But between parenting and managing a household, sitting down with a 400-page Victorian novel would take up way too much of my free time.
So I pivoted. What if I could get that same Gothic atmosphere, that same delicious dread, but in two-hour chunks instead of fourteen-hour reading commitments?
Movies were the answer.
I just needed to find the film equivalents of the novels I couldn't put down.
The List
I found a goldmine: gothic fiction films spanning nearly a century. And I organized them from newest to oldest, which turned out to be perfect. Start with the modern interpretations you might recognize (Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, the Daniel Radcliffe Woman in Black) and work your way back through time until you arrive at Nosferatu from 1922.
It's like an archaeological dig through cinema. Each decade peels back another layer of what "gothic" means on screen.
But I Still Wanted to Read Something
Here's where it gets fun. I didn't want to abandon reading entirely. I just needed it to fit into the cracks of my life. Something I could read in short bursts.
I found The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction by Nick Groom.
This book is a gem. It covers everything that carries the Gothic name: architecture, history, politics, fashion, music, even why we call certain fonts "gothic." Thirteen chapters that give you the full sweep of what "Gothic" has meant across centuries.
And here's the beautiful part: it pairs perfectly with thirteen movies.
The Structure
The curriculum works like this:
- Read a chapter from The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction (takes maybe 20 minutes)
- Watch the paired movie (two hours of atmospheric bliss)
- Repeat through all thirteen chapters
Then, as a finale, you watch Nosferatu, the oldest film on the list, the one that started it all, without any reading beforehand. Just pure silent-era horror as your graduation ceremony.
The chapters aren't directly about the films. That's what makes it interesting. You read about Gothic architecture, then watch Crimson Peak with its crumbling mansion bleeding red clay. You read about ghosts in post-Reformation tragedies, then watch The Others and feel it in your bones.
The book gives you context. The movies give you the experience. Together, they give you a real understanding of why Gothic works, why it's persisted for centuries and why it still makes your skin prickle.
This Is Supposed To Be Fun
I need to say this clearly: there's no pressure here.
Elizabeth Jean, whose TikTok made "personal curriculum" go viral, gets this exactly right. A personal curriculum isn't school. It's not about completion rates or optimal learning strategies. It's about spending your precious free time on things that genuinely light you up.
Some weeks I watch two movies. Some weeks I watch none. Sometimes I reread a chapter because I want to, not because I have to.
The point is that I'm learning about something I actually care about, in a way that fits my actual life. That's it. That's the whole thing.
Make Your Own (Or Try Mine)
Here's what I want you to take from this:
Option 1: Make your own personal curriculum.
What have you been genuinely curious about? Not what you think you should learn. What actually pulls at you? What do you find yourself talking to ChatGPT about? What topics make you lose track of time?
Start there. Find a book, a podcast series, a collection of documentaries, whatever format works for your life. Make it easy on yourself. The goal is sustainable curiosity, not another obligation.
For example, the book I used is part of Oxford's "A Very Short Introduction" series, and there are hundreds of them: Archaeology, Art History, Tragedy, Classical Mythology, Renaissance Art, Jazz, Dinosaurs. Each one is compact, readable, written by actual experts, and could anchor a personal curriculum paired with documentaries, films, museum visits, or podcasts.
Option 2: Try the Gothic Cinema curriculum.
If haunted mansions and atmospheric dread sound appealing, you're welcome to join me. I've packaged the whole thing as a CSV you can download and import into Gorilla Tasks.
Download the Gothic Cinema Personal Curriculum (CSV)
The curriculum includes:
- 14 films spanning 1922-2015
- 13 reading assignments from The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction
- Descriptions for each item so you know what you're getting into
You'll need to get the book separately (it's widely available and inexpensive), and of course you'll need to find the films wherever you stream things.
The Joy Is the Point
There's something almost rebellious about learning for no reason. In a world that wants every minute optimized, every skill monetized, every hobby turned into a side hustle, choosing to study Gothic cinema just because it sounds fun feels like a small act of defiance.
But it's also just... nice. It's nice to look forward to my next movie night. It's nice to understand why a particular shot makes me uneasy, to recognize the architectural references, to see how del Toro is riffing on a tradition that goes back centuries.
I'm not going to get a certificate for this. Nobody's going to hire me because I can explain the difference between Ostrogoths and Visigoths.
That's why it's fun. Zero pressure. Pure entertainment.