Horror is an essential part of the cinematic landscape. Even back at the very dawn of film as a medium, horror was there, becoming one of the very first genres to make the leap. One could, and should, argue that even something like the Lumière Brothers’ formative 1896 film L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat or any number of foundational Georges Méliès films of the late 1800s/early 1900s were rooted in the horror genre. As Martin Scorsese himself once said, "If you don't understand or appreciate the horror genre, you really have no understanding or love of film itself."
To this end, it’s kind of insane how much of the horror genre’s greatest accomplishment over the years have gone largely unnoticed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Over the course of the past several decades, horror has become something of a dirty word amidst the more prestigious mindset that many Academy members have adopted. However, in the last few years, this has begun to change for the better, and with this year’s ceremonies freshly concluded, it is readily apparent that horror is no longer a dirty word in Oscar circles. That’s because this year saw films such as Guillermo del Toro’ Frankenstein, Zach Cregger’s Weapons, and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners take home some of the biggest awards of the evening and cement just what an incredible year for horror 2025 was.
These new horror wins include Amy Madigan winning Best Supporting Actress for her role as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, three costume and production design wins for Frankenstein, and an insane four wins for Sinners, which included Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Musical Score. While horror might not have ultimately taken home the Best Picture award this year, these ceremony was still a decided victory for films that embraced the genre and soared off of the back of it.
For the sake of argument, consider that the last time a film that was widely considered ‘horror’ won Best Picture at the Oscars was back in 1991, when Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs took home the gold. Of course, even then, the film was subject to some pretty drastic critical revisionism, in which Academy members bent over backwards to try and recontextualize the film as a ‘thriller’ or ‘drama’ rather than an outright horror movie. This same thing has happened in the years since, with something like Bong Joon Ho’s Best Picture-winner Parasite, which balances a litany of tones and genres but definitely has overt horror elements, rarely even being discussed as a win even tangentially related to the genre.
All of this is especially odd, given just how entrenched in cinematic history horror is. As far back as the early ‘30s, when cinematic pioneers like Todd Browning, James Whale, and Rouben Mamoulian were making integral works that helped to transition the medium from silent pictures to sound, performances such as Frederic March’s indelible turn in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were winning Oscars. And yet, somewhere along the way, it was decided that to reward a film from such a genre was somehow uncouth. As a result, films that are now considered all-time staples of the genre from across the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s were flat-out ignored by the Academy altogether.
But with a slate of horror films that are unapologetically a part of the genre such as this year’s winners, it must be said: horror is well and truly back as a proper Oscar contender. Each of these three films are true-blue horror films, and to attempt to label them as anything else would be nothing less than a sign of pure cowardice. What makes something like Sinners so great is that it is a genre film, through and through, and how a filmmaker like Coogler tackles that challenge with such individual articulation and aplomb.
Here’s hoping this sets the trend moving forward, and that horror projects continue to be treated with the kind of reverence and respect they deserve. Horror is an integral, inseparable part of the cinematic artform, and to pretend that it isn’t just makes all parties involved look foolish.