Ten Times a Horror Film Should Have Won Best Picture

Despite multiple nominations for The Substance, the Academy normally doesn’t care for scary films

The Substance (2024). Credit: Mubi

As far as I’m concerned, the best news to come out of this year’s Oscar nominations are the multiple nods for Coralie Fargeat’s outstanding horror satire, The Substance. With recognition in the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay categories, that’s a remarkable showing for a film in a genre at which the Academy normally turns up its nose. Is this a sign of change? Is Oscar finally losing its unfashionable snobbery concerning horror?

It’s too soon to say, but the cynical part of me suspects Hollywood still considers horror too disreputable to recognise it with any regularity. Even if The Substance wins in any of these categories (which I consider unlikely, though I’ve got my fingers crossed for Demi Moore), I suspect it will have more to do with the fact that Oscar loves a film about itself. Coralie Fargeat’s savage takedown of ludicrous beauty standards is a film about Hollywood, and Hollywood loves attention, even when it’s the target of dark and gruesome satire.

The rest of the time, despite extremely rare blips — wins in all major categories for The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Jordan Peele’s Best Original Screenplay win for Get Out (2017), for instance — the Academy consistently overlooks some of the greatest, most influential films ever made because they happen to be horror. At best, they only ever receive nominations (itself a rarity), I suspect with a pinched nose through gritted teeth. That’s a crying shame, so here are ten times I’d have given Best Picture to a horror film.