A Nightmare on Oscar Night: 2025 Is the Year for Horror

It's no secret the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences harbors a poorly concealed aversion to the genre of horror. I'm not even sure why I care about or put any sort of thought into the inner workings of the Academy. After all, it's not like I go to the movies anymore. Growing up, from the time I was a child until I was 21, my parents and I used to go to a theater every Saturday afternoon. It didn't matter what we saw. I just loved getting out of the house, immersing myself in the interior spacious beauty of the theater, sitting in a darkened room with a large bucket of popcorn seated on my lap, and allowing the story unfolding on a giant screen to wash over me for a couple hours. As should be no surprise at this point, my favorite films to see on the big screen were horror. It was my favorite Saturday activity since I was five, when I saw what I believe was my first theatrical horror experience: The Grudge. Nowadays, I find it far more rewarding to watch these movies in the quiet and comfort of my living room or basement, free of the distractions that would characterize my final trips to the theater and ultimately turn me away from communal movie-going. 

Even though I no longer see the movies that end up securing Oscar nominations, I still know about them due to my daily frequenting of the movie review-aggregation website, Rotten Tomatoes, which I refer to as a sort of second home. Because of that, I still retain a strange excitement every year when the Oscar nominations are released, and you can guess the website I first visit to discover them. It's no surprise to see some of the highest rated, Certified Fresh movies like Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Chapter Two, and Sean Baker's Anora up for Best Picture, with Best Directing nominations offered to two of those three. But what caught my eye and filled my horror-obsessed heart with incredulous joy this morning was the nominations secured by two of the highest acclaimed horror films of 2024: Coralie Fargeat's original body horror/Hollywood satire, The Substance, and Robert Eggers' remake of the 1922 silent Gothic horror landmark, Nosferatu. Unfortunately, I can't comment on the merits of either film, on account of I now wait for every horror film to reach my TV (which takes significantly less than it used to pre-pandemic). 

Prior to this upcoming awards ceremony, only three horror films made in the 21st century have been given a warm welcome into the exclusive, bombastic environment of the Academy. More egregious than that, only one of those films received its fair share of nominations. That would be Jordan Peele's sci-fi/possession/social satire, Get Out, nominated at the 2018 ceremony for four major Oscars: Best Picture, Actor (Daniel Kaluuya), Director (Peele), and Original Screenplay (Peele). Of those four, Peele got to take home the statue for the last one, probably the most deserving. 

The following year, John Krasinski's sci-fi horror hit, A Quiet Place, earned a nomination for a single technical award: Best Sound Editing. Not to say that's as good as "nothing," but to act like it was only notable for that one technical achievement, to deprive it of something more prominent like original screenplay, directing, and even picture, is a grave disservice. To nominate lesser rated films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book for best picture, actor, screenplay, and editing, and to toss out a consolatory technical nomination to A Quiet Place (which it didn't even win) while leaving Ari Aster's supernatural horror drama, Hereditary, utterly empty-handed in the rear-view mirror just shows how discriminatory the Academy is toward the horror genre.

In 2020, Robert Eggers' sophomore feature, The Lighthouse, received a similar single technical award for cinematography. So okay, three horror films were welcomed into the Dolby Theatre three years in a row, but only one was legitimately celebrated. And it deserved to be. Get Out remains one of the most innovative horror films of the past decade, and one of the most audacious directorial debuts in modern cinema history. I saw it three Saturdays in a row when it first premiered in late February, 2017.

But it would be disingenuous to claim that Peele's horror movie was the only one in this century deserving of such big-time attention until now. Where was Essie Davis' nomination for her breathtaking star turn in Jennifer Kent's 2014 psychodrama-cum-creature feature, The Babadook? Or Toni Collette's for her similar accomplishment in Aster's aforementioned Hereditary? I could name so many more, but we're talking about multiple years' worth of award-worthy achievements in horror. And many of these films are celebrated appropriately by film critics. They're not the problem because, unfortunately, they don't run the Academy.

With that said, it seems the stuffy, horror-hating voters at the Academy may finally be waking up to the fact that, hi, horror is a genre of film too. And one that deserves to be awarded for its accomplishments just as much as any non-horror film. I was aware that Demi Moore was not only nominated for, but won the Golden Globe for her lead performance as Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance, her first instance of award recognition in her entire career. Because of that, my optimism for her chances at being nominated for an Oscar increased a bit. But I still wasn't fully expecting it, because this is a horror movie we're talking about, and no one discriminates against horror more than the Academy. 

Imagine my gleeful astonishment when I went on RT and saw that not only has Moore been nominated for Best Actress at the upcoming 2025 Oscar ceremony, but that The Substance is now officially the second horror film of the 21st century -- the first in seven years since Get Out -- to have received a nomination in any major category, let alone four. It is up for Best Actress (Moore), Directing (Fargeat), Original Screenplay (Fargeat), and most shockingly, Best Picture, making it now one of six films in the history of horror to receive that highest honor. (And no, I don't personally consider Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan a horror film.) In total, The Substance is nominated for five awards, the last being for makeup and hairstyling.

The second horror film that will be making an appearance at this year's ceremony is from the same man whose previous genre effort was awarded an Oscar nomination for cinematography, which he did not walk home with. That would be Robert Eggers, one of our most consistent and stylish horror filmmakers today, for his remake of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, the first, albeit unofficial, adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula. While this Gothic vampire chiller will not be in the running for Best Picture or Actress for Lily-Rose Depp, whose breakout performance as Ellen Hutter has been praised by most critics as a revelation, Eggers' regular cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, has received his second nomination for his self-explanatory contribution. Furthermore, Nosferatu has been nominated for three more artistic awards: production design, makeup and hairstyling (for which it will be competing against The Substance), and costume design. None of these four nominations are particularly surprising, given Eggers' past occupation as a production designer and the lavish aesthetic he bestows upon every film he produces. But to see a filmmaker of this caliber being acknowledged and rewarded for his contributions to the horror genre is seriously reassuring. His debut feature, The Witch, received zero love at the 2017 ceremony. His sophomore effort snagged a single nomination for Blaschke's claustrophobic, black-and-white lensing. And now, five years later, for his fourth movie (third if we're talking only horror), Eggers can look forward to the possibility of taking home four bronze statuettes. You're getting closer and closer to the 24-karat gold plating, kid. 

At the start of this article, I thought only two horror films of 2024 were being nominated for Oscars, but upon my last look at RT's list, I now see a third has been invited into the party: Alien: Romulus, the seventh installment in Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror franchise (ninth if you include the Alien vs. Predator crossovers), which has been nominated for Best Visual Effects. Unsurprisingly, that's yet another single technical nomination awarded to a horror film, but considering the combined nine higher-caliber Oscars belonging to Nosferatu and The Substance, I'd say we're making progress here. While I can't see this becoming an annual trend, it's satisfying to see that the Academy is no longer turning a (complete) blind eye to the magic, artistry, and cultural significance that frequently goes into the making of a quality genre picture. 

A fourth critically applauded horror film of 2024, which also happens to be a sequel, will unfortunately be excluded from the party altogether come awards night. That movie is Smile 2, whose star performer, Naomi Scott, is agreed to have given one of the best performances of the year. Like Depp, Scott is suffering the fate experienced by most actors who have given great performances in a horror film: endless praise from the critics, zero attention from the voters. No matter. The Oscar is just a statue. Made of bronze, no less. And for my money, I would take critical praise over Oscar nominations any day.

Nominations are one thing. Do you think any of these three horror movies (The Substance, Nosferatu, and Alien: Romulus) will actually win some of the Oscars for which they've been nominated? Will Demi Moore be placing an Oscar beside her Golden Globe? Will the allegorical (emphasis on "gore") story of a washed-up actress gradually deteriorating into a hideous, humpbacked, gelatinous creature with an evergrowing head beat out the more "sophisticated" drama about a visionary architect who escapes postwar Europe and flees to America to rebuild his life for movie of the year? 

Tune in to the 97th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 2nd at 7 p.m. to find out.