Sunday Scaries: ‘Sinners’ Helped to Bring Horror to New Oscar Heights

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, we’re now looking at the incredible showing horror managed to actually have at the Academy Awards last week…

Last Sunday, the 98th Oscars honored the best in cinema for 2025. Wins for Paul Thomas Anderson at last will be part of the history books. However, on the long arc of film history, as great a Best Picture winner as One Battle After Another is, the big wins for Sinners, as well as a win for Weapons, managed to be a red letter date for horror as a genre. The Academy is finally starting to take fright flicks seriously, with major Oscar gold now attached. Any real film lover should be excited about this development, too, as it’s good for the medium on the whole.

Sinners not only set the record for most Academy Award nominations, shattering the old record, it managed a pair of above the line wins, while clearly being the number two in both Best Picture and Best Director for Ryan Coogler. Coogler got his Oscar in Best Original Screenplay, while Best Actor went to Michael B. Jordan. Considering how both Delroy Lindo in Best Supporting Actor and Wunmi Mosaku in Best Supporting Actress were right in it to the end, this is the type of showing for horror that we haven’t gotten since The Silence of the Lambs.

Beyond Sinners, the big scary movie win was in Supporting Actress, where Amy Madigan won for Weapons. The fact that it was an organic campaign to boost that performance only makes the victory that much sweeter for Madigan. A veteran actress in a cool horror title? Once upon a time, the nomination would have been her reward. No, it feels like anything is possible. How can you not love that?

Now, Sinners did not manage to win Picture or Director, and Weapons was snubbed in Picture and Original Screenplay, but there does feel like an Oscar sea change happening with horror. The next few years will continue to tell us how much of a trend this is or isn’t becoming, but if nothing else, it seems like the genre is no longer fully on the back foot. If the Academy is looking at quality cinema as quality cinema, the days of horror titles being nominated as a fun surprise could be ending. If/when that happens, titles like Sinners and Weapons, as well as The Substance last year (and to a lesser extent, Nosferatu), have helped pave the way. Here’s to horror becoming a prestige genre. I say, bring it on!

Stay tuned for another Sunday Scaries installment next week!