Movies
Oscars 2025 – ‘The Substance’ Nominated for Best Picture, Best Leading Actress & Best Director
French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s body horror masterpiece The Substance was one of the best horror movies of last year, and it’s one of the rare horror films to come along in recent years that had actually been generating Academy Awards buzz. Well, the nominations for this year’s Oscars were announced today, and The Substance received some major recognition.
For starters, Demi Moore has been nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her performance as Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance, a fading celebrity who injects herself with a cell-replicating substance that literally makes her give birth to a younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley). It’s a performance that already resulted in Moore taking home the Golden Globes trophy for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, which sets the stage for a potential Academy Awards win.
Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) has also been nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, while The Substance has become one of the rare horror films to be nominated for Best Picture.
In the entire history of the Oscars, only a handful of horror movies have ever received a nomination for Best Picture, with standout exceptions including The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan and Get Out. The only film on that list to actually win Best Picture was The Silence of the Lambs, which took home the statue 33 years ago.
The Best Picture nomination alone for The Substance is needless to say a massive win for the horror genre, an honor that has quite frankly never been bestowed upon a horror movie as wonderfully bonkers as the body horror insanity Fargeat unleashed upon us last year.
Elsewhere on the list of this year’s Academy Awards nominations, The Substance was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Makeup & Hairstyling, giving the film five Oscars nominations in total. You can browse the full list of nominees right here.
The Substance will be competing against the following fellow nominees…
Best Picture
- Anora
- The Brutalist
- A Complete Unknown
- Conclave
- Dune: Part Two
- Emilia Pérez
- I’m Still Here
- Nickel Boys
- The Substance
- Wicked
Best Actress
- Cynthia Erivo – Wicked
- Karla Sofía Gascón – Emilia Pérez
- Mikey Madison – Anora
- Demi Moore – The Substance
- Fernanda Torres – I’m Still Here
Best Director
- Sean Baker – Anora
- Brady Corbet – The Brutalist
- James Mangold – A Complete Unknown
- Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez
- Coralie Fargeat – The Substance
Best Original Screenplay
- Anora
- The Brutalist
- A Real Pain
- September 5
- The Substance
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
- A Different Man
- Emilia Pérez
- Nosferatu
- The Substance
- Wicked
The 97th Academy Awards air March 2 from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.
The Substance is now available to watch at home, streaming exclusively on distributor Mubi’s streaming service. If you’re not a subscriber, you can rent or purchase the film on all major digital outlets, and it was also just released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD this week.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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