Why the Oscars Will
Never
Take Horror Seriously
(And That's Okay)
Words by Alex Secilmis 12 February 2025
Take Horror Seriously
(And That's Okay)
Words by Alex Secilmis 12 February 2025
3 March 2025 - In all their glitz and glam, the Hollywood elite watch in shock as The Substance pulls off a clean sweep. When they seal the deal with Best Picture, Monstro Elisasue graciously accepts the award, thanking her mother and dropping a tit before the audience is showered in her projectile blood. Conan O’Brien screams. Poor Timothée Chalamet slips and breaks his skinny legs. Nobody is hit worse than the Emilia Pérez table. All is well, and every horror fan’s dream has finally come true.
But enough manifesting. Big-category nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Screenplay) for Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror bonanza, as well as artisan recognition for Nosferatu and Alien: Romulus, have reopened the discussion on the Academy’s long history of neglecting the genre. Is The Substance’s success cause for celebration? Or incentive to re-state the case for the Oscars to stop snubbing scary movies?
While I celebrate its success, The Substance is no turning point. Horror has long been regarded by its detractors as lowbrow, and many people just can’t stomach the genre. Put plainly, the Academy isn’t watching these movies. Fargeat’s sophomore feature is only furthering a pattern: the few that get invited to the party do so in spite of their spookiness.
In the 96 years of the Oscars, the horror genre has only had seven Best Picture nominees—and they had to sneak their way in. The Sixth Sense and Black Swan are psychological thrillers with strong leading performances from established stars. Get Out - the only Original Screenplay winner in horror history - is an eloquent, accessible satire. Jaws rode the wave of its status as the first summer blockbuster. The anomaly is the first invitee: a bona fide, brutal chiller that was a cultural phenomenon. But it’s been 52 years, and no movie like The Exorcist has since made the cut.
Horror’s only Best Picture winner, The Silence of the Lambs, appeals as a detective story. Having a charming intellectual psycho as its villain helped the medicine go down, and the key is that the scares are presented with a certain restraint. Unlike Hereditary, the subject of one of the most criticised horror snubs in recent memory, no one’s head gets sawed off onscreen.
In the Big Five (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), the genre has received the odd moment of affection from the Academy (Kathy Bates’ Best Actress win for Misery, Fredric March taking Best Actor for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), but its only real shot is in the artisan categories. Here, horror has a decent record. To name a few, The Fly, Beetlejuice, and The Wolfman (2010) all won for Best Makeup (now the award for Makeup and Hairstyling), Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd for Art Direction (now Production Design), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula for Costume Design. So, while I appreciate Nosferatu’s four nominations in these categories, it’s not the sign of significant change that horror fans are hoping for.
Why the Academy Tried The Substance
No matter the context, The Substance’s Awards Season success has been a welcome surprise. All the same, it can be accounted for.
In very recent years, with an increasingly international pool of voters, the Academy has been looking to Cannes. Four of the last five Palme d’Or winners have been nominated for Best Picture, with Parasite securing a historic win. The Substance won Best Screenplay at the film festival and, since then, has barrelled towards the Oscars on the back of word-of-mouth, a stellar marketing campaign, and box-office success.
While “elevated horror” never translated prestige into Oscar nominations, The Substance pulls off the neat trick of blending high and lowbrow horror by violently dissecting female beauty standards. As with Get Out, the allegory is as blatant as can be—which makes it more accessible.
The real sell, however, is that the narrative mirrors the career of its star. The Academy loves a comeback story, and Demi Moore readily checks that box. In her Golden Globes acceptance speech, Moore alluded to the damage of a producer calling her a “popcorn actress” earlier in her career. She internalised the idea that she could star in lowbrow movies that made a lot of money but would never be “acknowledged” for her talent. If her success offers any victory for the genre, it’s that Moore is finally being taken seriously by her peers via a horror movie.
Moore’s resurgence makes her the lynchpin of The Substance’s campaign, with her stardom helping the film get noticed for the big categories. The narrative is the reason why she’s the Best Actress frontrunner while her character’s other half, Margaret Qualley, was overlooked. I point this out not to discredit Moore’s incredible performance, but to analyse the Oscars' tendencies. And in that regard, for the Academy to have The Substance on their radar and not nominate Qualley is - dare I say - sexist. Especially in an uncertain Best Supporting Actress race, I’d wager the Oscars and BAFTAs didn’t acknowledge the depth of her performance because she plays the satirised object of the male gaze.
Remember those five Palme d’Or winners? Funnily enough, the only one that missed out on a Best Picture nom was Titane. Another French body horror film, just like The Substance, only more transgressive, queer-coded, and devoid of any Hollywood stars. It didn’t even make the shortlist for Best International Feature.
Not the Only Overlooked Genre
Horror and comedy are often compared as two genres specialising in tension and release. Whether a scare or a joke, they both deliver a series of punchlines—and are both underappreciated by the Academy.
A straight farce will never sway voters, but Triangle of Sadness’ Best Picture nomination may offer the best explanation for The Substance’s. An on-the-nose English language satire by a critically-acclaimed foreign director, Ruben Östlund’s film was a hit at Cannes and knowingly leverages lowbrow elements to articulate its critique (compare the vomit scenes with Fargeat’s body horror). Triangle and The Substance edged their way in as smart comedy and smart horror.
Still, while a Moore win is likely and I wouldn’t be shocked at Fargeat scoring an upset with Original Screenplay, The Substance won’t follow recent anomaly Everything Everywhere All At Once and go all the way (the film won seven awards including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay). The sci-fi comedy had three comeback narratives in its main cast—with Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ke Huy Quan winning Best Actress, Supporting Actress, and Supporting Actor respectively. Most importantly, despite laugh-out-loud moments and audacious multiverse action, the story goes heavy on the sentiment.
Of all things, Everything Everywhere’s success parallels The Silence of the Lambs. Unlike the bulk of Oscar contenders, Jonathan Demme’s horror/thriller and The Daniels’ sci-fi comedy were both released in the first quarter and became sleeper hits, building traction organically through word-of-mouth and growing into event films. Their legitimacy was gradually proven with the help of an early release, a pattern followed by other rare Best Picture-winning comedies It Happened One Night, Marty, and Annie Hall.
The Emilia Pérez of It All
If you were ever unsure if the Academy was really in the business of recognising the year’s best films, look no further than a drug cartel musical that has managed to royally piss off both trans people and Mexicans in equal measure.
Earning a staggering 13 nominations, Emilia Pérez again benefits from the combo of Cannes prestige and familiar Hollywood actresses. Yet there’s another box it ticks. The Oscars like to reward representation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they reward good representation. That is, they like stories about minorities, but not made by that minority.
I don’t want to feed into the moralistic binary of exclusively “good” or “bad” representation, but there’s a reality that the Oscars enjoy outside-in stories. These movies are often glossy tableaux of a minority’s experience—lacking, well, substance.
Look at the Best Picture wins for Crash and Green Book. The Best Picture nom for The Blind Side and Sandra Bullock’s Best Actress win. In a similar vein, consider their love of an able-bodied actor playing a disabled character (Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot, Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman). As a lifelong stutterer, the success of The King’s Speech was comforting. But, years later, I can see how the Academy couldn’t resist the cocktail of British royalty, historical recreation, and Colin Firth learning to stutter in a story where he “overcomes” his disability.
So, I find it entirely unsurprising that the little gold men are intrigued by Emilia Pérez, but uninterested in I Saw the TV Glow: a haunting, beautiful film about the trans experience from Jane Schoenbrun, a trans writer/director. Do I think that much of the Academy has even seen TV Glow? Not a chance.
Why Should We Care?
As a fellow Skye Riley stan, I would have been overjoyed at a Naomi Scott nom. The same goes for Lily-Rose Depp’s monster-fucking, tongue-wagging tour-de-force. But the Oscars have set patterns that have never been altered, only slightly adjusted.
Would I welcome a change? Of course. Do I want more horror filmmakers to be recognised and reap the benefits? Absolutely. But it’s worth remembering, or perhaps discovering, that the Oscars are a well-oiled machine built on multi-million-dollar campaigns. They’re not a meritocracy, and, while they can very tangibly energise or revitalise careers, maybe we fans and critics needn’t put so much stock in them.
So pick your favourites, make predictions, and throw watch parties, but don’t mistake the Academy for the definitive authority on cinema. While I’ll celebrate The Substance taking Best Actress and maybe clinching Original Screenplay, horror has always existed on the fringes—and we can appreciate it with or without the validation.
But enough manifesting. Big-category nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actress, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Screenplay) for Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror bonanza, as well as artisan recognition for Nosferatu and Alien: Romulus, have reopened the discussion on the Academy’s long history of neglecting the genre. Is The Substance’s success cause for celebration? Or incentive to re-state the case for the Oscars to stop snubbing scary movies?
While I celebrate its success, The Substance is no turning point. Horror has long been regarded by its detractors as lowbrow, and many people just can’t stomach the genre. Put plainly, the Academy isn’t watching these movies. Fargeat’s sophomore feature is only furthering a pattern: the few that get invited to the party do so in spite of their spookiness.
In the 96 years of the Oscars, the horror genre has only had seven Best Picture nominees—and they had to sneak their way in. The Sixth Sense and Black Swan are psychological thrillers with strong leading performances from established stars. Get Out - the only Original Screenplay winner in horror history - is an eloquent, accessible satire. Jaws rode the wave of its status as the first summer blockbuster. The anomaly is the first invitee: a bona fide, brutal chiller that was a cultural phenomenon. But it’s been 52 years, and no movie like The Exorcist has since made the cut.
Horror’s only Best Picture winner, The Silence of the Lambs, appeals as a detective story. Having a charming intellectual psycho as its villain helped the medicine go down, and the key is that the scares are presented with a certain restraint. Unlike Hereditary, the subject of one of the most criticised horror snubs in recent memory, no one’s head gets sawed off onscreen.
In the Big Five (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), the genre has received the odd moment of affection from the Academy (Kathy Bates’ Best Actress win for Misery, Fredric March taking Best Actor for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), but its only real shot is in the artisan categories. Here, horror has a decent record. To name a few, The Fly, Beetlejuice, and The Wolfman (2010) all won for Best Makeup (now the award for Makeup and Hairstyling), Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd for Art Direction (now Production Design), and Bram Stoker’s Dracula for Costume Design. So, while I appreciate Nosferatu’s four nominations in these categories, it’s not the sign of significant change that horror fans are hoping for.
Why the Academy Tried The Substance
No matter the context, The Substance’s Awards Season success has been a welcome surprise. All the same, it can be accounted for.
In very recent years, with an increasingly international pool of voters, the Academy has been looking to Cannes. Four of the last five Palme d’Or winners have been nominated for Best Picture, with Parasite securing a historic win. The Substance won Best Screenplay at the film festival and, since then, has barrelled towards the Oscars on the back of word-of-mouth, a stellar marketing campaign, and box-office success.
While “elevated horror” never translated prestige into Oscar nominations, The Substance pulls off the neat trick of blending high and lowbrow horror by violently dissecting female beauty standards. As with Get Out, the allegory is as blatant as can be—which makes it more accessible.
The real sell, however, is that the narrative mirrors the career of its star. The Academy loves a comeback story, and Demi Moore readily checks that box. In her Golden Globes acceptance speech, Moore alluded to the damage of a producer calling her a “popcorn actress” earlier in her career. She internalised the idea that she could star in lowbrow movies that made a lot of money but would never be “acknowledged” for her talent. If her success offers any victory for the genre, it’s that Moore is finally being taken seriously by her peers via a horror movie.
Moore’s resurgence makes her the lynchpin of The Substance’s campaign, with her stardom helping the film get noticed for the big categories. The narrative is the reason why she’s the Best Actress frontrunner while her character’s other half, Margaret Qualley, was overlooked. I point this out not to discredit Moore’s incredible performance, but to analyse the Oscars' tendencies. And in that regard, for the Academy to have The Substance on their radar and not nominate Qualley is - dare I say - sexist. Especially in an uncertain Best Supporting Actress race, I’d wager the Oscars and BAFTAs didn’t acknowledge the depth of her performance because she plays the satirised object of the male gaze.
Remember those five Palme d’Or winners? Funnily enough, the only one that missed out on a Best Picture nom was Titane. Another French body horror film, just like The Substance, only more transgressive, queer-coded, and devoid of any Hollywood stars. It didn’t even make the shortlist for Best International Feature.
Not the Only Overlooked Genre
Horror and comedy are often compared as two genres specialising in tension and release. Whether a scare or a joke, they both deliver a series of punchlines—and are both underappreciated by the Academy.
A straight farce will never sway voters, but Triangle of Sadness’ Best Picture nomination may offer the best explanation for The Substance’s. An on-the-nose English language satire by a critically-acclaimed foreign director, Ruben Östlund’s film was a hit at Cannes and knowingly leverages lowbrow elements to articulate its critique (compare the vomit scenes with Fargeat’s body horror). Triangle and The Substance edged their way in as smart comedy and smart horror.
Still, while a Moore win is likely and I wouldn’t be shocked at Fargeat scoring an upset with Original Screenplay, The Substance won’t follow recent anomaly Everything Everywhere All At Once and go all the way (the film won seven awards including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay). The sci-fi comedy had three comeback narratives in its main cast—with Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ke Huy Quan winning Best Actress, Supporting Actress, and Supporting Actor respectively. Most importantly, despite laugh-out-loud moments and audacious multiverse action, the story goes heavy on the sentiment.
Of all things, Everything Everywhere’s success parallels The Silence of the Lambs. Unlike the bulk of Oscar contenders, Jonathan Demme’s horror/thriller and The Daniels’ sci-fi comedy were both released in the first quarter and became sleeper hits, building traction organically through word-of-mouth and growing into event films. Their legitimacy was gradually proven with the help of an early release, a pattern followed by other rare Best Picture-winning comedies It Happened One Night, Marty, and Annie Hall.
The Emilia Pérez of It All
If you were ever unsure if the Academy was really in the business of recognising the year’s best films, look no further than a drug cartel musical that has managed to royally piss off both trans people and Mexicans in equal measure.
Earning a staggering 13 nominations, Emilia Pérez again benefits from the combo of Cannes prestige and familiar Hollywood actresses. Yet there’s another box it ticks. The Oscars like to reward representation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they reward good representation. That is, they like stories about minorities, but not made by that minority.
I don’t want to feed into the moralistic binary of exclusively “good” or “bad” representation, but there’s a reality that the Oscars enjoy outside-in stories. These movies are often glossy tableaux of a minority’s experience—lacking, well, substance.
Look at the Best Picture wins for Crash and Green Book. The Best Picture nom for The Blind Side and Sandra Bullock’s Best Actress win. In a similar vein, consider their love of an able-bodied actor playing a disabled character (Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot, Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman). As a lifelong stutterer, the success of The King’s Speech was comforting. But, years later, I can see how the Academy couldn’t resist the cocktail of British royalty, historical recreation, and Colin Firth learning to stutter in a story where he “overcomes” his disability.
So, I find it entirely unsurprising that the little gold men are intrigued by Emilia Pérez, but uninterested in I Saw the TV Glow: a haunting, beautiful film about the trans experience from Jane Schoenbrun, a trans writer/director. Do I think that much of the Academy has even seen TV Glow? Not a chance.
Why Should We Care?
As a fellow Skye Riley stan, I would have been overjoyed at a Naomi Scott nom. The same goes for Lily-Rose Depp’s monster-fucking, tongue-wagging tour-de-force. But the Oscars have set patterns that have never been altered, only slightly adjusted.
Would I welcome a change? Of course. Do I want more horror filmmakers to be recognised and reap the benefits? Absolutely. But it’s worth remembering, or perhaps discovering, that the Oscars are a well-oiled machine built on multi-million-dollar campaigns. They’re not a meritocracy, and, while they can very tangibly energise or revitalise careers, maybe we fans and critics needn’t put so much stock in them.
So pick your favourites, make predictions, and throw watch parties, but don’t mistake the Academy for the definitive authority on cinema. While I’ll celebrate The Substance taking Best Actress and maybe clinching Original Screenplay, horror has always existed on the fringes—and we can appreciate it with or without the validation.