Scared Sh*tless: Why is the Academy Awards Scared of Nominating Horror Films?
HEREDITARY - A24
Why is The Academy Afraid of Nominating Horror Films?
As the 92nd Academy Awards approached, reactions to the recent nominations were fraught with anger and disappointment. Every year, the films that are recognized by the Academy are the safest choices possible, with next to no surprises thrown in to keep people on their toes. Specifically, the lack of love shown for horror films is always a sore disappointment, since horror is one of the genres with the most creative potential. Last year, Hereditary was completely ignored despite having immaculate cinematography and an incredible lead performance in Toni Collette. This year, Us and Midsommar were pushed to the side and forgotten about. This raises the ultimate question: why is the Academy afraid of nominating horror films?
Both Florence Pugh and Lupita Nyong’o gave astounding performances in Midsommar and Us, respectively, but they weren’t recognized for their craft. It is clear the Academy has no respect for the horror genre and the main cause of this stems back to the problem at the heart of Hollywood award shows — they don’t take any risks. Midsommar is a challenging film, both formally and thematically. It’s long, slow and eerie for a majority of its running time before it goes off the deep end in a riveting and uncomfortable finale. It’s not an easy watch but it’s a rewarding one in the end. Us tackles big themes that deal with identity, belonging and class. It makes the main villain sympathetic and understandable; the final twist blurs the line of who you’re supposed to be rooting for even further. Hereditary is a disquieting family drama that slowly morphs its way into an uncompromising and disturbing horror film. It doesn’t pull any punches and is frequently stomach-churning.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS - MGM
These three films all take big risks that pay off, but the Academy doesn’t care. To them, they might as well be the latest Saw or Insidious film. The Academy has shown through their past nominations that they favor easy, safe, mainstream crowd-pleasers that audiences love. Because of the challenging nature of the three films mentioned, not everyone who saw them enjoyed their experience. CinemaScore, an aggregate that polls audiences upon seeing films, rated Hereditary at D+, Midsommar a C+, and Us a B. It is not limited to these films either. The Witch, a stunning achievement from start to finish and one of the best horror films of the 2010s, got a score of C-, and Mother, a blisteringly intense horror-thriller with some of the most disturbing imagery in recent memory, got a bottom of the barrel F rating. Neither of those films received any nominations. Audiences don’t want to be challenged during horror films, and the bad word of mouth that they start spreading has a negative effect on their chances of getting nominated.
The Academy’s history of nominating horror films is a short one. Only six films from the genre have ever been nominated for Best Picture: The Exorcist, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, and Get Out. Hell, quite a few of those are debatably not even horror films, instead learning more toward the thriller categorization. Out of those six, only Silence of the Lambs took home the award. Despite there being so many amazing horror films over the years, only half a dozen have been deemed prestigious enough to nominate. It was a pleasant surprise when Get Out got nominated a couple years ago, as it looked like The Academy was starting to learn from their mistakes, but the two years that followed proved that it was merely a fluke.
Horror is a genre that has shown a willingness to break out of the b-movie camp from which it was born, but the lack of recognition for the daring game-changers is heartbreaking. The Academy has been getting a deservedly bad rep for not branching off the beaten path and looking at their history of nominating horror films is a good example of this. They need to start diving deeper than the surface level in order to find the real gems, the challenging films that may not appeal to everyone’s tastes but offer an abundance of quality nonetheless.