It seems that everyone (except contrarian troll Armond White) loves Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and it’s not hard to see why. The film, which has a 99% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and has to date grossed over $130 million on a $4.5 million budget, has been almost universally praised by everyone who has seen it. The consensus? It’s the perfect horror film made at the perfect time.
Naturally, Get Out began generating Oscar buzz almost immediately; aside from it being a horror film, which the Academy tends to ignore outright, it’s every bit the sort of movie you’d expect to see celebrated on the grandest stage of them all. Tackling pressing race issues and starting the kinds of conversations that only movies can, Get Out is an important horror film with something to say, so it’s not all that hard to imagine the Academy hoisting it up as a rare example of horror cinema worth respecting. But what are the odds of Get Out actually nabbing an Oscar?
An interesting article hit THR this week that may shed some light on this exciting possibility. The site reports that Academy members on both coasts received invitations to screenings of Jordan Peele’s rated R horror film, which is noteworthy because live action features are rarely screened for Academy members this early in the year. According to the site, animated, documentary, foreign-language and short films are often the only films screened from the first two months of any given year. They’re calling it an “unusually early show of confidence” on Universal’s part.
THR adds:
For a movie this outside-the-box that has gone over this well, one cannot rule out a best picture nomination (although one usually eludes even more optimally timed genre films, excepting March 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, March 1996’s Fargo and February 1991’s eventual winner The Silence of the Lambs), and a best original screenplay nomination certainly seems attainable.
The most recent horror movie nominated for Best Picture (if you choose to consider it a horror movie) was Black Swan in 2010, preceded by The Sixth Sense in 1999. Other horror films to earn Best Picture noms over the years include The Silence of the Lambs (the only horror film to win the big award), Jaws, The Exorcist, and Deliverance; it’s a rare occurrence, needless to say.
Could we finally see horror get some Academy respect at the 90th annual ceremony next February? If there’s any film that brings that potential with it, it’s certainly Peele‘s Get Out.
