Horror movies have long taken a backseat during the prestigious Academy Awards, but time and time again, they’ve proven they’re more than worthy of recognition.
You can count the number of horror movies that have been nominated for the coveted Best Picture award at the Academy Awards on two hands—it’s seven. Since the awards ceremony was established in 1929, only one film has won in this category: Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs in 1992. The film tells the story of FBI agent Clarice Starling (an Oscar-winning Jodie Foster) and her encounters with the notorious Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played to perfection by Anthony Hopkins, who also bagged the Best Actor Award for his performance.
This year, The Substance is nominated for Best Picture making it the seventh horror film to do so—maybe, just maybe, it has a shot at winning and making history once more in the process. However, the mere fact that a horror film made it into the category at all is astounding; it’s no secret that the Academy Awards has a history of snubbing the genre, as many cinephiles and horror lovers have pointed out over the years.
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The Winner For Most Snubbed
The Academy Awards’s horror snubbing goes way back. At the 1932 ceremony, Fredric March won the Best Actor Oscar for his terrifying performance as the titular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but this would remain an isolated incident. Horror wouldn’t be recognized in the above-the-line categories again until William Friedkin’s The Exorcist earned a Best Picture nomination in 1974. Before that? A long list of horror films that were never acknowledged for what they truly were—masterpieces that not only influenced an entire genre but also shaped cinema as a whole.
Take Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), both of which continue to influence generations of filmmakers. If we go even farther back, there’s 1931’s Dracula, which cemented a specific image of Bram Stoker’s bloodsucker in our collective imagination, and James Whale’s Frankenstein, which helped define gothic imagery on film.
The snub list goes on to include more works that many have no doubt praised and heard about. Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining still sends chills up the spines of audiences (who can forget the twins in the hotel hallway bathed in blood, or the sound of Jack Nicholson’s axe and Shelley Duvall’s screams?). Mary Harron’s American Psycho also gave us a killer (pun intended) morning beauty routine thanks to Christian Bale’s impeccable line delivery.
Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, set against World War II England and starring Nicole Kidman, delivered one hell of a plot twist with a creepy, no-frills atmosphere. Darren Aronofsky’s stranger-danger film mother!, while divisive, no doubt delivered imagery that has kept people up at night (for those who’ve watched it, the baby scene comes to mind). Ti West’s Pearl also has a special place in horror fans’s hearts with Mia Goth’s hysterical “I’M A STARRRRR!” line.
In more recent years, directors like Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers have become some of the most exciting voices in the genre.
Peele’s Us makes the scenario of being invaded by evil doppelgangers incredibly palpable (Lupita Nyong’o certainly deserved all the accolades for her exceptional performance as not one, but two distinct characters). Aster’s directorial debut Hereditary had fans repeating Toni Collette’s memorable “I AM YOUR MOTHER!” monologue for weeks, and was followed by his other hit psychological-horror Midsommar, set in a small rural village in Sweden.
Eggers himself hasn’t released a single bad movie; his works—like The Witch, The Lighthouse, and the recent Nosferatu—are always steeped in history with an acute attention to detail, and remain fan favorites (there are too many quotable lines and fantastic scenes to recount, but The Witch’s “Would’st thou like to live deliciously?” stands out, as does the maddening black-and-white montage of cabin fever-ridden Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse).
Personally, I’ve found that horror movies have constantly presented some of the most boundary-pushing, innovative feats of acting, cinematography, and storytelling out there today—but don’t take it from me. It’s clear that a great many people—everyone but awarding bodies, it seems—feel the same way. Horror movies have consistently raked in huge numbers at the box office. In 2024, crime-horror Longlegs became the year’s highest grossing indie film, earning $100 million globally.
What Makes A Horror Movie “Worthy” Anyway?
There’s no definite answer to why the Academy Awards has consistently failed to recognize iconic horror movies. It’s not the only institution to hold this bias, as this year’s Golden Globes was also largely unprepared to properly award horror, recognizing Demi Moore and Hugh Grant for their performances in The Substance and Heretic, respectively, by choosing to lump them under the “Musical or Comedy” category.
But an institution, at the end of the day, is made up of people with varying preferences and perspectives that are subject to bias. Generally, works that fall under genre categories like horror—including fantasy and animation—have never fared as well as other films during awards season.
This may have a lot to do with the stereotypes attached to the genre, namely jumpscares, gore, and a certain campiness that critics have viewed as cheap or mindless. Such notions conflate the genre’s movies, not giving the very best in the mix a chance to shine simply because they’re written off as nothing but that—a visceral way to scare or unsettle, but not much else.
In a piece for NPR, film and media studies professor Adam Lowenstein posits that a “horror tax” must be paid for a piece to be worthy of recognition—and it involves a partial dissociation from the genre label itself.
“In order for horror to be recognized artistically, there’s often an argument that has to be trotted out that goes something along the lines of, ‘Well, it’s not just a horror film, it’s something else,’” he explains to writer Brianna Scott. “It’s a way of erasing horror as a genre marker and saying this is actually something else. It’s something more elevated, it’s something worth your attention as a potential award nominee.”
This makes sense when you review the horror movies that received nominations and won awards for Best Picture. 1973’s The Exorcist was a bleak exploration of the limits and nature of faith, making viewers wonder if evil can really be stopped or contained without harsh sacrifices. Jordan Peele’s Get Out dealt with the insidious candidness of racism in America, receiving nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture in 2017 (it went on to win the Best Original Screenplay award). More recently, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance tackled ageism and beauty in the entertainment industry, creating a delightfully revolting body horror spectacle (paired with strong performances) to drive its points forward.
Both movies deserve the praise, but one can’t help but wonder if the Academy is praising them because they’re testaments to the beauty of the genre, or because they present compelling social commentary that can be separated from the conventions of their labels. Cultural critic Zach Schonfeld writes for The New York Times: “[…] The Substance continues a tradition in which the Academy embraces horror only when voters can focus on everything but the horror: a pointed social message, an obvious allegorical lesson, an actor’s overdue comeback narrative.”
The Functions Of Fear
The list of Oscar-nominated horror films grows a bit when you consider more technical categories. In the 97th Academy Awards, Robert Eggers and his team are getting due praise for his adaptation of Noseferatu, namely in Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Costume Design.
But horror is so much more than stellar shots, special effects, and costumes (though they’re crucial in building a story). You don’t have to peel back layers of darkness, gore, ghosts, and murderers to see its “true” message or value, because these elements are the point. They’re what make the genre so effective as a vehicle for examining the pertinent fears that plague our society.
In all its disgusting, disturbing, and haunting glory, horror is a form of catharsis, a confirmation that the world has and always will be filled with problems—but in a sense, recognizing these things is the first step to processing them. It’s as Willem Dafoe’s character, the eccentric Dr. Albin Eberhart von Franz, says in Nosferatu while the protagonist’s small town is quickly consumed by an evil that skeptics refuse to validate: “If we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists.”
Banner photos from IMDb (Psycho; Dracula; The Shining; Hereditary; Us; The Witch; and Pulse.
