There’s a reason the worst “Oscar Bait” exists, and it’s not because Felix Unger’s roommate loves fishing. Over the course of nearly 100 years the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has proven that they, like all specific audiences, have a particular sense of taste. The movies that win the Academy Award for Best Picture tend to be serious dramas, often historical pictures and biopics, with important social messages. (Bonus points if it’s about World War II.)
There have always been exceptions, and recent years have trended more surprising, but some genres have a harder time breaking into the Best Picture category than others. Horror movies have historically had a hard time of it, since the genre — on which the industry has often financially relied — has frequently been disregarded by critics and the public at large as “low art.” This has always been a lie and great horror movies have been produced for just about as long as there have been movies, but the Academy has barely recognized the genre in its top category.
Only one horror movie has ever won Best Picture, and only seven or eight films (depending on how you count) have even been nominated. Let’s hope those numbers only continue to grow. Until then, these are the only horror movies ever nominated for Best Picture.
“Gaslight” (1944)
Conventional wisdom doesn’t usually tag George Cukor’s “Gaslight” as a horror movie, but conventional wisdom is, much like “common sense,” not the same as expertise. Were it released today “Gaslight” would be categorized as a psychological horror story, and rightly so. Ingrid Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, a young woman who falls for a charming older man, Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), who moves them into her mother’s old house and convinces her she’s going mad. The film’s twist has been irrevocably ruined now that “gaslighting” is familiar terminology, but thanks to Cukor’s nightmarishly claustrophobic storytelling — and Bergman and Boyer’s incredible performances — this classic tale of marital terror still hits hard today.
“Gaslight” was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won Best Actress for Bergman and Best Production Design. It lost Best Picture to the feel-good Bing Crosby vehicle “Going My Way.” (The original “Gaslight,” released in 1940, was suppressed to preserve the surprise finale of the Oscar-nominated remake, and was nearly lost in the process. It’s worth seeking out but dang it, George Cukor’s version is better.)
“The Exorcist” (1973)
William Friedkin’s harrowing adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel stars Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil, a single mother whose daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), is possessed by the devil. Maybe. “The Exorcist” came out at a time when secularism was on the rise, and audiences had anxieties about society abandoning its faith or, conversely, faith refusing to make way for social progress. The film comes replete with hellish imagery and terrifying, now-iconic moments, but at the core this film is about a sick little girl who science cannot help. Perhaps religion can’t either. Screw the supernatural, that’s what’s scary about it.
Impeccably crafted from top to bottom, the film was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won two, for Blatty’s adaptation of his own novel, and for Best Sound. It lost the Best Picture award to another 1973 blockbuster, the con artist drama “The Sting,” starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Robert Shaw.
“Jaws” (1975)
The best and, thus far, the only killer shark movie nominated for Best Picture was a game-changing motion picture on many levels. “Jaws” properly introduced the world to Steven Spielberg, a promising and very young filmmaker whose second theatrical release became the highest grossing film in history and ushered in a new era of blockbuster summer spectacles. Roy Scheider stars as a sheriff in a small island resort community who puts the local economy at risk by closing the beaches when a giant shark attacks. Richard Dreyfuss co-stars as a plucky marine biologist and Robert Shaw steals scenes as an embittered, embattled fisherman who promises to kill the beast.
“Jaws” was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Editing and Best Sound. It won three of them, only losing Best Picture to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which swept the top five honors: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay. (The other nominees included “Barry Lyndon,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Nashville,” making it one of the most competitive years on record.)
“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
Cannibalism! Human skin suits! These are not usually the plot points one associates with a Best Picture winner, but the voters made an exception in 1991 when “The Silence of the Lambs” became the first horror movie to win the top prize. And hey, remember how “Jaws” lost Best Picture to a film that won the “top five” Oscars? The Academy made up for it by giving Jonathan Demme’s serial killer classic the awards for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay as well.
Jodie Foster plays a young FBI recruit who develops a chillingly close relationship with incarcerated murderer Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), who helps her overcome the sexist bureaucracy that minimizes her achievements and catch another, possibly worse serial killer. Demme’s exquisite direction highlights the film’s powerful feminist themes but the film’s inaccurate and irresponsible misrepresentation of transgender people had real-life ramifications that taint this otherwise impressive — and horrifying — production.
“The Sixth Sense” (1999)
M. Night Shyamalan’s crisp and brilliant horror drama “The Sixth Sense” was an unexpected box office smash in 1999, a late summer thriller whose acclaim and popularity spread like wildfire thanks to its enthusiastic word of mouth. It was the second-highest grossing movie of 1999, blowing “Toy Story 2,” “The Matrix” and “The Mummy” out of the water. So it makes sense that the Academy would make one of its rare horror movie exceptions for Shyamalan’s early masterpiece. It was just that popular and, let’s face it, just that good.
Bruce Willis stars as Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist whose latest patient, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is deeply troubled, terrifying his single mother Lynn (Toni Collette). Crowe soon discovers Sear’s real trouble is that he can see ghosts, and ghosts are scary as hell. Or are they? “The Sixth Sense” is a scary movie but its sensitivity is its greatest asset, turning what could have been a low-rent shocker into a thoughtful and emotionally resonant character study.
“The Sixth Sense” was nominated for six Academy Awards, a coincidence the film’s Oscar campaign leaned heavily into. In addition to Best Picture it was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Osment), Best Supporting Actress (Collette), Best Director and Original Screenplay (Shyamalan) and Best Editing. It didn’t win any of them, and lost Best Picture to “America Beauty,” a film that hasn’t aged nearly as well.
“Black Swan” (2010)
Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” is a twisted horror drama about an obsessive ballerina, played by Natalie Portman, who loses her mind when she’s cast in the lead for “Swan Lake.” Navigating obscene pressure from her mother, the desperate need for her director’s approval, and the jealousy for her rival, she succumbs to a disturbing doppelgänger mentality that threatens to destroy her.
Aronofksy has never been a subtle filmmaker, but there’s a precedent for melodramatic ballet fantasies at the Academy Awards: Powell and Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes” was nominated as well, back in 1948. The film also takes some distractingly obvious, some might even say questionably overt influences from Satoshi Kon’s 1997 anime classic “Perfect Blue.” (In an odd coincidence, another Best Picture nominee that year, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” borrowed heavily — to say the least — from another Satoshi Kon classic, the sci-fi thriller “Paprika.”)
“Black Swan” was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Portman won the Best Actress Oscar, but the film lost the big prize to the (significantly more conventional) drama “The King’s Speech.”
“Get Out” (2017)
Jordan Peele was a beloved comedian for many years before he made his directorial debut with one of the scariest movies of the century, immediately redefining his career. In the Oscar-nominated “Get Out,” a modern take of the classic sci-fi horror film “The Stepford Wives,” Daniel Kaluuya stars as a Black photographer who visits his white girlfriend’s affluent family in New England, where their blatant attempts to prove how not progressive they are prove, to hilarious and disturbing effect, that they’re incredibly racist, and up to something deeply sinister.
The twists in “Get Out” are perhaps well known, but the way Peele unfolds his story is beyond brilliant, with a screenplay that makes sense the first time you see it, makes more sense the second time, and continues to reveal hidden secrets with every passing viewing. Peele rightly won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and “Get Out” was also nominated for Best Director, Best Actor (Daniel Kaluuya), and Best Picture.
It lost the top award to Guillermo Del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” itself a horror-adjacent motion picture, which re-imagines “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” as a fairy tale love story set against the fraught backdrop of America in the 1950s.
“The Substance” (2024)
Of all the horror movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” is the goriest. And it’s not even close. The film is a squishy body horror masterwork about aging celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who loses her job and her self-worth when she’s fired and told she’s too old for television. She’s presented with a drug that brings out her younger self, literally, resulting in Margaret Qualley clawing her way out of Demi Moore’s back.
Fargeat’s film is a none-too-subtle but incredibly effective commentary on the commodification of women’s bodies and the psychological toll it takes, with a performance for the ages by Demi Moore and some of the most disgusting makeup effects since the glorious heyday of Screaming Mad George. Universal Studios produced it, didn’t understand it, and gave it away to Mubi, and they’re probably kicking themselves right now because it was a box office hit that earned five Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Moore), Best Original Screenplay and Best Makeup & Hairstyling.
As of this writing, “The Substance” is considered a frontrunner in at least two of those categories, Best Actress and Best Makeup & Hairstyling, and a serious contender for Best Original Screenplay.
