The Oscars are finally embracing monsters after years of ignoring horror

This year’s awards race has been a particularly controversial one: from Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón's unearthed tweets, to The Brutalist's AI controversy, and Fernanda Torres’ resurfaced blackface sketch… It’s getting nasty out there. But elsewhere, horror fans — including myself — are rejoicing.

It has been seven years since Get Out was the last horror film to be been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and thirty-three years since a horror film has amassed nominations in most of the main five categories: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and acting categories.

The last flick to sweep, let alone be nominated, across all those categories was 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. And it is most definitely the first time in history that a film about a bulbous, puss-seeping monster with teeth on its chest has been an awards contender. I, for one, hope it’s not the last time.

Horror has always had it rough at awards campaigns. The Substance is only the seventh only horror film nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars (The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan and Get Out), with just one winner (The Silence of the Lambs) in the ninety-seven-year history of the ceremony. The numbers are even worse at the Baftas, where only four horror films have ever been nominated in the Best Film category (and none in Best British Film).

From the very start of the Oscars, the American Academy has always recognised the inventiveness of horror films with technical awards: An American Werewolf in London, The Fly, Beetlejuice, Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Wolfman (yes, that one) all won for Best Make-Up Design. And cinematographers working in the genre started off strong, as early as Rebecca (1940) and Phantom of the Opera (1943), but have received zero awards since then (my fingers are crossed for Jarin Blascke and his work on Nosferatu).

While the technical advances ushered in by horror, in fields such as special effects, costume design, sound, music and editing, are often recognised, awards in the top categories have remained elusive. The old-fashioned bias that horror is unserious and unworthy remains strong.

It’s particularly noticeable in the acting categories. Awards bodies will often reward performances with ‘visible’ effort, where actors lose or gain weight, or perform under enormous amounts of make-up, but they seem to consider performances in horror films less worthy of recognition.

It’s not like manipulating your features, face and body to play two distinct characters in the same film is as impressive as putting on a bad wig. (Yes, I’m still mad about Lupita Nyong'o’s snub for US.)

The frustrating part of this is that horror has always been an extremely powerful playground for performances. Fredric March won Best Actor for his role as the title characters in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1932, and then it wasn't until 1991 that Anthony Hopkins picked up his statuette.

An female actor hasn't won for a horror performance since Natalie Portman's 2010 award for The Black Swan. While they are often break out roles (Daniel Kaluuya got the nod for Get Out and Kathy Bates won for her first onscreen part in Misery), an actor has a better chance of having their horror performance considered Oscar-worthy if they are established.

That was the story back in 1962 with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and it can be seen once more this year with Demi Moore for The Substance. In these cases, the star power, and career narrative behind an actor supersedes the bias against the genre.

Even the taking on of these roles can come with considerable suspicion, as if these once formidable stars were somehow less formidable because they deigned to take on a horror film and excelled in it. The underlying message is: it's their star power that made the horror film worthy, not the film itself. But, hey, if it gets Hugh Grant Bafta-nominated for Heretic, it's a win for horror fans and the Hugh hive alike.

Ironically, actors playing iconic real-life horror figures will get the awards nods the filmmakers themselves didn’t get: Ian McKellen got nominated for playing Frankenstein director James Whale in 1998's Gods and Monsters and Willem Dafoe got a nod for playing Nosferatu actor Max Schreck in 2000's Shadow of the Vampire.

Of course, just like there is a circuit of horror film festivals, streaming services and specialist distributors, the genre also has its own awards circuit that recognise the multiplicity of creative contributions in horror films like the Saturn Awards, and sometimes feature tongue-in-cheek laurels like the 2023 Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Amityville Film.

Amityville Christmas Vacation won, FYI.

But despite the long and fertile history of horror cinema's contributions to technical advancements, creative ingenuity and memorable performances that have continued to terrify and inspire generations of fans, filmmakers and actors, horror has remained in the shadows for the mainstream awards bodies.

Until now.

And if one film about a bulbous, puss-seeping monster with teeth on its chest has been can be nominated for Best Picture, so can others.

The 2025 Baftas will take place on 16 February, while the 2025 Oscars will be held on 10 March.