The Monk is perhaps the darkest and most visceral novel of all gothic fiction – it was also one of the first, preceeded only by Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. It has a die-hard cult following – Breton makes reference to it in his Surrealist Manifesto and Luis Bunuel once tried to make it into a film in the late 1960s, sadly shelved due to funding cuts. In short, taking The Monk from book to screen is a precarious venture, but by all accounts Dominik Moll’s adaptation does an admirable job, capturing all the sexual repression and earthy violence with real flair. Plus Vincent Cassel plays an evil monk. Sold.
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James started out as an intern in 2011 and came back in summer of 2012 to work online and latterly as Print Editor, before leaving in May 2015.