Editorials
Golden Scares: Should Horror Receive Its Own Category at the Golden Globes?
2020 was the year where just about everything was thrown into a state of disarray and one of the most prominent industries to be impacted was the entertainment industry. Movie premieres, festivals, concerts, and awards shows were either delayed or outright cancelled, setting the tone for a year in which nothing felt the same as it was before.
The chaos of 2020 has already bled into the new year as well, with movie and sporting events still being cancelled and prominent awards shows like the Oscars and Golden Globes being delayed to later than usual dates. These delays have done more than just make us wait longer; they have outright thrown a massive wrench into the awards season lineup, prompting movies to delay until January and February for a wide-ish release and spotlighting more unusual films for awards consideration.
If anything, the 2020-21 awards season has become one of the most notably intriguing seasons for movies as the guidelines for what could be considered an “awards” film have been twisted beyond what previous years can comprehend. Streaming exclusive films are now eligible for consideration, opening the doors for streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and Shudder to throw their hat into the competitive field of awards films and further blurring the lines between “awards” and “non-awards” films.
If the shaky rules of awards culture haven’t already been exposed to us before the pandemic came, last year all but chucked the rule book out the window. The Golden Globes have felt this impact by being thrust into the news again and again for their outdated rules and the unstable nature behind their rules of categorization. Films that might’ve been eligible for a Best Motion Picture award one year could be ineligible another year, prompting many controversies over their handling of categories and what films go where.
Horror in particular has continuously felt the wrath of awards culture over the past decades and the Golden Globes haven’t been any different. Scarce nominations scattered throughout its 50+ year lifespan has left the genre playing catch-up to its more award friendly contemporaries in drama and comedy. Similarly to the Oscars, select horror titles have often only received an inkling of recognition from the Golden Globes and Oscars by distancing themselves from their more transgressive companions in the genre, now popularized by the term “elevated horror.”
Mainstream awards outlets can stomach horror through this thoroughly modern term, providing them the justification to lump these select features in categories like Comedy/Musical and Drama. Get Out has humorous elements to it, which is all that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association needed to place the horror film (as Jordan Peele himself describes it) in Comedy, betraying the tone and message that Peele was going for. The drama in The Exorcist was compelling enough for it to win Best Motion Picture – Drama, yet it stands as one of the only horror films to even come close to that kind of mainstream awards success.
Writing this now, it bears mentioning that horror is far from underappreciated in mainstream culture, often reliably turning a profit in the world of films, shows, and literature. The audience for horror exists and it is that very audience that has propelled names like Stephen King, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, and so many more to stardom and fame.
The genre has seen a wealth of audiences ranging from gore hounds and midnight movie frequenters to teenagers and casual moviegoing adults looking for a good scare, keeping horror in a spot of relevancy that even some of the most acclaimed dramas and comedies have had difficulties keeping. 1999 films like The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense (films that either dived or dipped their toes into horror) feel likelier to come up in 21st century conversations than American Beauty (that year’s Best Picture Oscar winner), don’t they?
So what gives?
A notable difference between the Golden Globes and the Oscars is categorization. The Oscars group all categories in to include any awards-qualifying film under any genre. In contrast, the Golden Globes have split their top film awards into two main areas of film: Drama and Musical/Comedy (so technically three, but it wouldn’t be the Golden Globes if it didn’t freely move the goalposts each year). Best Film and the leading Actor and Actress awards all factor this in, which would theoretically allow a greater number of films of different genres to be nominated.
Therefore, it stands to reason that a separate category for horror would yield similar results, right? Genres intermingle with each other all the time, but when playing by the Golden Globes’ rules, three different categories for each of the top prizes separate films and performances accordingly. An additional category implies the idea of more titles being recognized for awards consideration, especially on a mainstream level that precedes the Oscars.
The addition of horror as a category runs the risk of feeling forceful to the voting body for essentially guaranteeing that horror titles and performances receive the same level of recognition as Drama, Comedy, and Musical. What if there are no good horror titles in the year? Maybe there’s a year where the genre fails to deliver on anything remotely acceptable. The horror blockbusters of the year stumble and yet voters would be required to stretch their brains to choose the films they hated the least to fill out the category.
That would bring us to the question of why we assume that horror must be held to this standard to begin with. It’s no shocker to state that there have been more than plenty of films over the years that got rewarded despite not boasting sizable or passionate audiences. Films that were considered “overrated” by general moviegoers, yet major voting bodies showered them with praise anyways. Would that suddenly become an issue if horror received similar treatment?
Drama and Comedy/Musical operate under these same regulations, yet there’s never a shortage of films for voters to choose from. All the talk about bad dramas, comedies, and musicals becomes nonexistent when major voting bodies suddenly feel the urge to reiterate that X year was a great year for films and how it was such a difficult task to only choose a handful of films. Was it that difficult or is this all just rooted in immediate memorability? Fall and Winter are the prime awards seasons for a reason.
There’s no doubting that films like The Exorcist, The Sixth Sense, District 9, Black Swan, Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, and Get Out are each ambitious and admirable achievements in horror and thriller recognized by mainstream outlets. The idea behind film awards is to appreciate the best that the year, festival, or genre had to offer, but genre titles seem to be among the only group of films in which that idea is upheld to a strict degree. Horror titles must truly capture the zeitgeist to even be considered, while other groups can scrape by with just being “pretty good.”
Mainstream awards outlets are a political game at the end of the day and this will surely not be a swerve for many of you reading this. Films are awarded based on the strength of their campaign and how much each respective one appeals to voters. There have been countless articles written on the various reasonings behind anonymous Oscar voters leaning the ways that they do. The voter who couldn’t get behind Parasite because of the language barrier is still fresh in my mind. Same with voters who outright admit to not even watching most of the animated category and just going with familiarity.
Despite this, there’s something about the casual shunning of many horror films from these awards that still irks me. How these shows can’t even seem to feign passive-aggressive politeness towards the genre despite it being the home to some of the most memorable and still-relevant films and shows in its history. How a popular and successful horror film like The Invisible Man still has less of a chance of being recognized than films that haven’t even been released to the public yet.
And somehow in-between my complaints, I do wonder if adding a horror category would truly change anything. Would the culture behind horror filmmaking change? This addition would believably inspire studios and filmmakers to craft their films in a more awards friendly manner seeing as how horror films would be a shoe-in to get some nominations. Great for the genre, but would the passion behind the storytelling and filmmaking be gone? When the end goal is award recognition, what kind of legacy would that leave behind?
Horror being consistently shut out is but a smaller area of a gargantuan issue with these awards in general. Each year, a growing slew of films from all genres and storytellers end the year without so much as a peep from award shows. Awards pundits feel the need to push the focus on the arbitrary importance of nominations, wins, etc. Awards culture has created a bubble dedicated to inflating the importance of films of which the majority fall off the radar the minute that awards season is over. Think of it like the 2K of the film industry.
It’s fun to speculate and look back on these films and there’s no shortage of articles on awards shows that are entertaining to read. I’ve dabbled with it myself on this site. But the monster that is awards culture has the potential to distort the idea behind why we tell stories and why horror is as beloved as it is in spite of scarce awards love. The adoring audience of Hereditary is still feeling the sting of Toni Collette’s snub, yet the film (especially the dinner scene) has left behind a lasting impression that has already elevated it to classic status in many horror fans’ eyes.
Maybe I’m wrong and adding in a horror category could be the first small step to genuine change in awards culture. The inclusion of more films could possibly open up award voters’ eyes to a bevy of films that are capable of standing toe-to-toe with their Drama and Comedy companions. Maybe it would actually force the HFPA to apply rules of equality to each category, which should theoretically be a given, no?
If news came out tomorrow that a horror category were to be added for future shows, of course I would be ecstatic at the notion. As risky as it is for awards culture to suck horror into its bubble, sometimes a little tinkering can go a long way in inciting real change. Would horror audiences feel the same way? How harsh would the backlash be from established awards voters? Would it change a damn thing?
Maybe not. But isn’t it worth a shot?
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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