Sunday Scaries: Horror Had a Huge Showing at the Oscar Nominations

The Sunday Scaries are upon us once again! Yes, as the weekend concludes, most of us feel an oncoming sense of anticipatory dread about the week ahead. Anxiety about work manifests itself into a feeling that’s known as the Sunday Scaries. However, we at Awards Radar are here to combat that, by taking back the name. Now, we want you think about a horror-centric piece on the site when you hear the term. So, let us continue on with another installment of the Awards Radar Sunday Scaries! Today, with the Academy Award nominations having just happened, we’re looking at how well horror films actually did…

The Oscar nominations on Thursday morning were a red letter date in the history of the horror genre. This crop of nominees featured the most horror we’ve seen in recent memory. We previewed what might have gotten nominated here in a prior column. Today, we’re celebrating what actually did, as well as why it’s so good for the genre on the whole.

First up, the big one was The Substance. Five nominations, including four in above the line categories (Best Picture, Best Director for Coralie Fargeat, Best Actress for Demi Moore, and Best Original Screenplay for Fargeat), is absolutely huge. Throw in a nod for Best Makeup & Hairstyling, which is definitely a tribute to good gore work, and horror fans should be elated.

The only actual miss for the flick was Margaret Qualley in Best Supporting Actress. Other than that? The Substance killed it on nomination morning. If we look back in a few years to see where horror started getting more respect from the Academy, we’ll look to this flick. There’s a very real possibility that it’s ultimately going to go down in cinematic history as a very important movie. Go figure. What a season this one has had.

Nosferatu managed to over-perform as well, getting four nominations for the vampire tale. Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup & Hairstyling is the kind of haul that a prestige work gets. The fact that this film played like one, ending up with the noms that it did, is a big step for not just filmmaker Robert Eggers, but for bigger budget horror on the whole.

Now, it didn’t do anything above the line, but it wasn’t especially expected to. So, this was, more or less, a best case scenario for the movie. There’s a classy nature to this one, while also being plenty gross, so it kind of hit the sweet spot for voters, at least on a technical scale. Between Nosferatu and The Substance, basically all bases were covered.

Then, we had Alien: Romulus crash the party with a Best Visual Effects nomination. This was more of a surprise, sure, but also came in a category that was more receptive to horror than others. So, it’s both a less likely citation and a more likely one in equal measure. The film wound up in a few shortlisted categories, so seeing it translate into a nomination isn’t bad at all.

Without this third film getting in, it would obviously have been just Nosferatu and The Substance, so it’s a nice little cherry on top for horror. Nothing too crazy, especially with it being a part of a previously cited franchise, but still, it’s a piece of the pie here that’s worth celebrating for genre fans out there.

Congrats to the scary movies nominated by the Academy. Hopefully, it spurs voters on to continue considering horror works for Oscar nominations. This year is an outlier right now, but maybe it doesn’t have to be? Here’s to more years where the Oscar nominations feature multiple horror films being embraced…

Stay tuned for another Sunday Scaries installment next week!