Editorials
Oscars 2025: 9 Other Horror Films & Performances That Deserved Nominations This Year
It’s a well-known fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences don’t tend to favour genre films when it comes to shortlisting for their tentpole awards ceremony. It’s simply not their bag and that goes that double for anything that happens to fall into the disreputable slum of horror. Indeed — bar a few outliers like Silence of the Lambs, The Exorcist or Get Out — scary movies rarely get a fair shake come Oscar season. Certainly not when compared to, say, glitzy biopics or period pieces that have a more prestigious air about them.
Yet, against all odds, the genre has done quite well for itself this year. Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is dominating the technical categories, The Substance has found itself as an unlikely contender for four of the “Big Five” awards, and even Alien: Romulus has gotten a look in for its VFX work.
With that being said, normally we’d be banging the drum for greater horror representation at the Oscars, but it doesn’t feel particularly warranted this time around. There’s already a strong line-up in place.
Of course, us gorehounds will never be wholly satisfied until our creepy and kooky culture is as widely celebrated within the annals of Hollywood as it is within our own little bubble. Which is why we have decided to take a moment (on the eve of the 97th Academy Awards) to highlight some missed opportunities to celebrate even more achievements in this genre over the past twelve months. Without further ado, let’s see who else should have made the cut.
Honourable Mentions: Best Sound for A Quiet Place: Day One; Best Actress for Lily-Rose Depp and Best Director for Robert Eggers in Nosferatu; Best Makeup and Hairstyling for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice; and Best Actor for Justice Smith in I Saw the TV Glow.
Best Actress: Nell Tiger Free (The First Omen)
Credit where it’s due, the Academy has whittled down a pretty respectable shortlist for their best actress prize this year and there are no glaring bad calls that need to be swapped out (Karla Sofía Gascón’s social media tirades notwithstanding). Plus, it’s the only acting category that has some decent genre representation to begin with, courtesy of Demi Moore’s portrayal of fading superstar, Elisabeth Sparkle, in The Substance.
Moore definitely earned her flowers here, but if we were to pick a runner-up for a horror leading lady it would have to be Nell Tiger Free in The First Omen. Showing an extraordinary commitment to the part — that goes well beyond what anyone could reasonably expect from a prequel to a franchise that has only ever seen diminishing returns — she is a true force to be reckoned with. In fact, she manages to carry the whole film without needing to rely on her more seasoned co-stars, like Bill Nighy or Ralph Ineson.
As novitiate Margaret Daino — uncovering a profane conspiracy within the Vatican Church — Free deftly weaves between antipodal extremes. By turn, she has to play: fiercely devout; sweet naivety; blubbering fear; righteous indignation; timid repression; and, eventually, uninhibited ferity. What’s most impressive is that she throws herself into each of these emotional states without a hint of vanity holding her back, as best demonstrated by her astonishingly raw, antenatal breakdown that’s been favourably compared to a similar scene from Żuławski’s Possession. If ever there was an attention-grabbing nominee clip for Oscar night, it’d be that one.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s review of The First Omen here.
Best Actress: Willa Fitzgerald (Strange Darling)
Strange Darling’s twisty- turny plotting necessitates that we remain tight-lipped about Willia Fitzgerald’s turn as “The Lady,” lest we risk spoiling some of the thriller’s biggest surprises. However, what we can say is that, if she didn’t so believably sell her oftentimes contradictory and mercurial character, then those major rug pulls wouldn’t work half as well as they do.
It’s a demanding role upon which the entire movie hinges and it asks an awful lot of its performer, who must be at once sympathetic but also unpredictable and difficult to read. As the deadly game of cat-and-mouse between her and Kyle Gallner’s “The Demon” escalates, Fitzgerald has to give you just enough insight into The Lady’s mindset to keep you invested without ever overplaying her hand. And it’s a delicate balance act that she absolutely nails. If you’ve seen Strange Darling, and can interpret our vague description, then you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s review of Strange Darling here.
Best Sound: Longlegs
You’d be hard-pressed to identify a movie — released within the past twelve months — that’s bolder with its audio mix than Longlegs. Osgood Perkins’ occult thriller may have split audiences right down the middle when it came to its languorous pacing, far-fetched plot twists and hyperbolic marketing campaign, but one thing that cannot be denied is just how effectively its soundscape gets under your skin. In a way that feels almost violating.
Sound designer, Eugenio Battaglia, employed a number of daring and experimental techniques to accomplish this: smuggling demonic messages into the film via backmasking; layering a subliminal “hell heartbeat” into the foley; and helping Nic Cage unleash his inner satanic energy by pitching the actor’s voice to an electric guitar. The end result is a mix that (appropriately enough, given Longlegs’ core themes of mind control) worms its way into your brain and festers there for days.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s review of Longlegs here.
Best Editing: The Substance
Truth be told, Coralie Fargeat’s exemplary body horror flick could probably hold its own in the audio department as well. After all, who could forget the viscerally unpleasant symphony of cracking bones, peeling fingernails, and Dennis Quaid noisily lapping up shrimp that it subjects you to?
However, in the interest of spreading the love more evenly, we decided to go with Longlegs in that category. I mean, it’s not like The Substance has been given the cold shoulder this awards season. On the contrary, it’s done remarkably well for a movie that’s indebted to the works of Brian Yuzna and Frank Henenlotter. I, for one, never thought I’d live to see the day that a film that ends with someone vomiting up their own boob would emerge as a viable Best Picture candidate. Yet here we are!
All of that being said, The Substance might have an impressive five Oscar nods under its belt, but I still think there was room for one more. Specifically, in the Best Editing field. As it stands, the actual shortlist for this category feels like a slapdash grouping of the respective Academy branch’s favourite overall films of the year. But (aside from maybe Anora and The Brutalist), none of them do anything especially noteworthy in terms of editing.
The Substance, on the other hand, is assembled very deliberately and with a sense of rhythmic propulsion that immerses you in Elisabeth Sparkle’s breakdown. Just take a moment to appreciate the comedic intercutting in that infamous kitchen scene, for example, or the way that an otherwise mundane transition from night to day is rendered far more interesting by synching it up to Elisabeth’s channel surfing. There’s so much creativity on display here and it’s a shame that it hasn’t got more attention.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s review of The Substance here.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Nosferatu
As someone who spends far too much time agonising over every single word they use in a piece of writing, I am in awe of Robert Eggers’ masterful command of language. His insistence on authentically capturing the speech of very particular historical epochs (whether that’s 17th-century puritanical America, Scandinavia in the Middle Ages, or New England’s nautical scene circa the 1800s) is a consistent highlight of his output.
And, just as with every other facet of his filmmaking, you’ve got to respect how much of a stickler he is for detail when it comes to how his characters talk. Paying keen attention to the minutiae of regional dialects, the evolution of syntax over the ages, and archaisms that have long since fallen out of favour, each line of dialogue Eggers pens feels painstakingly researched and yet somehow unforced.
This preternatural gift of the gab is especially evident throughout his latest offering, with Nosferatu containing some of the scribe’s best monologues and quotes to date (“I have wrestled with the Devil as Jacob wrestled the Angel in Penuel,” “ I am an appetite, nothing more”). For a remake that hews very close to its silent-era forbear, this eloquent dialogue makes Eggers’ version feel truly fresh and — even with all of the stellar production values that are put up on screen— is what ultimately stood out most to me.
It might be a bit showier than some of the nominees handpicked by the Academy but, surely, if there is anywhere that we ought to be celebrating distinctive voices in cinema, it’s with the Oscars’ dedicated screenplay categories.
Read more about Robert Eggers’ take on Nosferatu in Bloody Disgusting’s exclusive interview here.
Best Supporting Actor: Bill Skarsgård (Nosferatu)
Bill Skarsgård’s stint as Count Orlok was never destined for awards glory, even if it was showered with adulation by the viewing public. The simple fact of the matter is that his undead plague carrier is obscured by too many prosthetic appliances, shrouds of darkness and shallow focus cinematography for a great deal of Nosferatu’s runtime. And the Academy generally likes to see an actor’s work play out in front of their eyes before handing over a little golden statuette. With there also being a valid argument that the Hair & Makeup team (who are rightfully being honoured in their own field this awards season) are the artists truly responsible for bringing Orlok’s presence to the screen, you can understand why Skarsgård isn’t getting much notice. But that also means that we’re overlooking the unrecognisable transformation that the Swedish actor underwent.
Beyond just sticking that controversial moustache to his upper lip, Skarsgård completely changes his entire gait, body language and vocal register to become the imposing Orlok (even going so far as to work with an opera singer to lower his voice by a full octave). Not to mention, he also convincingly delivers many of his lines in an extinct Dacian tongue without it ever sounding silly. Far from it, he actually manages to make the vampire archetype both mesmerising and menacing again. Which is no small feat in a post What We Do In The Shadows climate!
Read Bloody Disgusting’s review of Nosferatu here.
Best Leading Actor: Hugh Grant (Heretic)
If voters were reluctant to praise somebody caked in prosthetics and off-putting facial hair pieces, then maybe Hugh Grant would have been the safer alternative for the Oscars. The Rom-Com stalwart simultaneously played to and against type in last year’s Heretic, portraying one the most sadistic (but also kind of disarming) horror antagonists in recent memory.
Essentially the final boss you’d encounter at the end of a r/atheism forum, his Mr. Reed passes the time by luring innocent missionaries to his house and then refusing to let them leave until they either agree with him on all matters theological, or else suffer for failing to. But he does it in that dapper, self-effacing way that only Hugh Grant can get away with.
In a lot of respects, it’s a pretty typical performance from the actor’s new “roughish cad” era, consistent with his turns in films like Paddington 2, The Gentlemen, or Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Yet by cranking the sinisterness up just a fraction of a degree, it turns out to be an absolute revelation. One that proves Grant might just have a future in the bonafide villain market if he ever wants to delve further into the dark side.
No wonder the Golden Globes decided to commend his work with a “Best Actor – Musical or Comedy” nod. In our opinion, the Academy should have followed suit, if for nothing else than that glorious Jar Jar Binks impression.
Read Bloody Disgusting’s review of Heretic here.
Best International Feature Film: Various
‘The Coffee Table’
This category is always a tricky one, thanks to its rigid eligibility criteria that can disqualify otherwise worthy nominees on the grounds of their domestic release dates, the language that is predominately used, and whether they’ve aired on television abroad prior to their theatrical exhibition in the States. It’s a minefield that’s led to some unfortunate snubs based on nothing but mere technicalities.
Bearing that in mind, some of the best international horror films that we’re going to namedrop here might not necessarily meet the stringent eligibility criteria for the Oscar. But, fuck it, they’re the ones that would have made the cut in a just world.
First up we have Cloud (which, incidentally, was put forward as Japan’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards). This flick saw Pulse director Kiyoshi Kurosa deliver another compelling psychological thriller that further explored his preoccupation with modern technology. Although certainly an acquired taste, Spain’s The Coffee Table earned its social media notoriety and a rave review from Stephen King by being legitimately shocking in a way that few Hollywood productions ever manage. And, finally, Exhuma broke box office records in its native South Korea while also translating well overseas, with our own Megan Navarro praising it as a fun, gory, creepy folk horror “with a lot on its mind.” Surely there was room for at least one of these kick-ass imports at the Oscars!
Read more about Bloody Disgusting’s favourite international horror films of 2024 here.
Best Director: Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow)
One of the (many) sticks being used to beat Oscar frontrunner Emilia Pérez is the fact that the musical melodrama is fundamentally disinterested in its own subject matter. Or, more accurately, its director is.
Indeed, Jacques Audiard has drawn the ire of detractors for brazenly asserting that he didn’t need to research Mexico — you know, the movie’s primary setting and focus of its half-baked social commentary — before rolling the camera, arguing instead that: “What [he] needed to know [he] already knew.” Likewise, the uncurious filmmaker has come under fire for neglecting to do any homework whatsoever on the trans experience. Which, again, is pretty central to the story he has chosen to tell! Rather than coming from a place of sincerity then, it feels very much like Audiard has tried to coast his way to critical acclaim by exploiting a number of provocative hot-button topics.
If the Academy were serious about recognising LGBTQ+ voices, they’d have been much better off giving his spot to Jane Schoenbrun. I don’t mean to pitch two trans stories against each other here in some kind of Highlander-esque “there can be only one” duel, but it just seems nuts to me that Emilia Pérez is getting all the love when I Saw the TV Glow is infinitely more authentic and heartfelt.
Compared to the cisgendered Audiard, it is evident from minute one that Schoenbrun has a much deeper understanding of the subject matter in question. They are able to draw upon very specific autobiographical details and their own lived experiences to communicate what it’s like to feel like you’re in the wrong skin, and there’s a sense of vulnerability to their finished product that’s utterly absent from the considerably more hyped Netflix original.
As someone who has no frame of reference whatsoever for the challenges trans people face, I Saw the TV Glow helped me to appreciate the significance of the “egg crack” moment, made me understand the anxiety that comes with watching time slip away while you struggle to embrace your true self, and put me through the wringer with its devastating gut-punch of an ending. That Schoenbrun was able to do this through visual metaphor and supernatural allegory (with little in the way of on-the-nose dialogue) is a triumph of directing and an achievement that deserved to be celebrated on the world stage.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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