The Oscars Have Finally Embraced Horror – And It’s Worth Screaming About

Instantly, you can name a bunch of them: Toni Collette in Hereditary. Lupita Nyong’o in Us. Essie Davis in The Babadook. Florence Pugh in Midsommar. Naomi Scott in Smile 2 (seriously). These horror performances are in total knockouts, plunging their respective performers to deep, dark places, dredging it all up onto the screen in films that keep audiences totally rapt. And yet, for some reason, awards season has historically been sniffy about films with a scare-factor. None of the above were nominated at the Oscars.

You can tell by how much of a big deal it is on the rare occasion when the Academy does reward a horror film. A small handful stand out. The Silence Of The Lambs won the ‘big five’ (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay) in 1992. Get Out got four nominations, Best Picture included, and nabbed Original Screenplay on the night in 2018. Misery brought a Best Actress award for Kathy Bates in 1991. Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape Of Water, rooted in the Universal Monster movies, is arguably horror-leaning, bagging Best Picture, Director and more in 2018. But that’s largely it. These are rare exceptions.

Academy voters have acquired a tase for blood, and bile, and other oozing fluids.

The Academy seemingly got the horror bug in 2026, though. This year’s nominations are a victory for vampire fans, undead creatures, witchy worshippers and body-horror sickos everywhere. Voters have acquired a tase for blood, and bile, and other oozing fluids. Let’s break it down.

The big news is, of course, Sinners’ record-breaking number of nominations. Ryan Coogler’s film is up for a mammoth 16 awards at the Oscars this year. And it is, in its very bones, a vampire movie, a siege film too, so steeped in genre tropes that it was released as a mega IMAX blockbuster last April, way outside the usual awards window. And it is undeniably outstanding, tense and tender and full of surprises, blending its bloodthirsty tropes with explorations of racial tensions, artistic expression, cultural appropriation and colonisation, superbly directed by Coogler, performed immaculately by its cast.

That’s reflected in the nominations. It’s up for Best Picture, and Director for Coogler, as well as Original Screenplay. This is a space that horror films rarely enter. Even more notably, several actors are nominated for the film: Michael B. Jordan, for his dual role as twin gangsters Smoke and Stack, notably – SPOILER ALERT! – getting vampiric as the film goes on; Wunmi Mosaku for her deeply touching turn as Smoke’s estranged wife Annie, later caught up in the siege mayhem; and the legendary Delroy Lindo, nominated at long last, this time as harmonica player Delta Slim. You could imagine a world in which Sinners is nominated for Ludwig Göransson’s exceptional score, a few production design and costume nods, and some recognition for Coogler. But to see the players get their shine too is a genuine moment.

They’re not the only ones. Weapons – another all-out horror, with spooky spells, jump-scares, bludgeoned heads, possessions – might not have received widespread Oscars recognition, but did get a Supporting Actress nomination for Amy Madigan. She plays the film’s terrifying antagonist, Aunt Gladys, an instant genre icon, able to veer between true terror and slapstick perfection. It’s an excellent performance, exuding malevolent menace, dialling up and down from scene to scene. And it’s the sort of role that Academy often tends to ignore.

That such nastiness as The Ugly Stepsister is Oscar-nominated is truly delightful.

There are other dark delights, too. Guillermo del Toro once again had the Oscar base swooning with his sumptuously gothic Frankenstein adaptation – zapping new life into a foundational horror text. For all that it finds deep sympathy with its Creature, that sentimentality goes hand in hand with limb-sawing gore, smashed heads, and twitching electrified corpses. It’s up for a total of nine awards! Including, significantly, Jacob Elordi for his transformative Creature performance, truly convincing as a man made of many men. Like The Shape Of Water, it’s up for Best Picture, and a Screenplay award. As garlanded as that film was, Doug Jones wasn’t nominated for playing its central fish-man.

Most surprising, and the nomination sure to have hardened horror-heads grinning with glee, is a Makeup And Hairstyling nod for The Ugly Stepsister. From Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt, it’s a riff on Cinderella told from the perspective of – you guessed it – one of the so-called ‘ugly stepsisters’, Lea Myren’s Elvira. By circumstance, her family is in dire straits; their only hope is for Elvira to earn the affection of eligible royal Prince Julian, by any means necessary. She undergoes all kinds of sickening surgeries and putrid procedures to be deemed worthy of him, in a sharp and satirical commentary on beauty standards. The film is a riot, like The Substance meets The Favourite. And it is legitimately disgusting, outright stomach-churning in its gonzo final reel.

That such nastiness is Oscar-nominated is truly delightful, even in the more horror-friendly technical categories. (Hey, they don’t have an award yet for ‘Most Upsettingly Massive Tapeworm’. Next year?) And since The Substance won Makeup And Hairstyling last year – Demi Moore sadly missed out on Supporting Actress – maybe The Ugly Stepsister can follow in Monstro Elisasue’s mutated footsteps.

As a horror fan, these nominations make the Oscars feel exciting again. They’re all well-earned. Obviously, there could be more. There’s nothing for 28 Years Later, chock full of outstanding performances, a remarkable score from Young Fathers, and mindblowing cinematography from Anthony Dod Mantle. And Bring Her Back, another Philippou brothers knockout, should have seen some recognition for Sally Hawkins alone, wrenching as a mum driven mad by grief.

For now though, this is a great step. The horror Oscars have arrived. And I’ll be watching with more investment than usual, hoping for some blood and guts among the sincere speeches and endless interludes. Bring on the Osc-argh!-s.