With the 2025 Oscars finally done, the door has officially closed on this year’s awards season, ending with a pretty solid show from first-time Oscars host Conan O’Brien, it’s clear that the awards has maintain its treatment of the horror genre. While the Oscars are, by their very nature, always divisive in some way, the winners of this year’s major Academy Awards mostly felt well-deserved. However, this year’s show also continued to highlight the Academy seemingly determined to keep horror out of the awards, despite how boundary-pushing and incredible many recent horror films have been.

2024 had plenty of incredible horror movies, but the two films that stood out more than the rest were Robert Egger’s latest film Nosferatu, and The Substance, directed by Coralie Fargeat and starring Demi Moore. Unfortunately, as has come to be expected of the Oscars, these two films felt very much sidelined in favor of movies outside the horror genre. There have been so many horror movies over the years that have stood the test of time to become some of the best films of all time, but the Academy still tends not to recognize the excellence of this genre.

The Substance & Nosferatu Only Combined To Win 1 Oscar & It Came In The Only Category They Were Both Nominated In

One Award Between the Two Films Is A Disappointment

The Substance and Nosferatu together won a combined single award at this year’s show, with that award being for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, which both films were nominated for. The Substance was the film that actually took home the accolade, beating Nosferatu, Wicked, A Different Man, and Emilia Pérez. While this award was more than deserved and a great achievement for the film, the fact that this is the only Oscar that either movie won shines a very unfortunate light on how the Academy overlooked these two horror films.

The Substance earned a total of five nominations, the same number as Dune: Part 2, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Nosferatu was given four nominations, those being for Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling as well. Nine nominations is a pretty significant number, even split between these two films, and only a single win being given is a disappointing end for these movies’ Oscar runs.

The Substance & Nosferatu Were Consistently Overlooked For More Traditional Oscar Movies

The Biggest Winners Were Very Expected

Anora was easily the big winner of the 2025 Oscars, leaving the ceremony with five awards. From the start, however, it was always going to be a big Academy Awards contender, hitting all the right notes for a film that would tend to do very well at the ceremony. The Substance, as a horror movie, isn’t the traditional Oscar-bait that most would expect to win big, and unfortunately, those expectations were proven right, as Anora beat The Substance in every category it was nominated in besides Makeup and Hairstyling.

Nosferatu had a similar story, losing Best Cinematography to The Brutalist and losing Best Costume Design and Production Design to Wicked. Both of those films were much more traditional Oscar winners, and while they still certainly deserved those awards, it does sting to see Nosferatu come out of the ceremony with no wins, seemingly only because of the genre it happened to be in. Horror movies are just as much of an art as the rest of cinema, and should be treated as such.

The Oscars Need To Start Properly Recognizing Horror Movies Even After The Substance & Nosferatu’s Strong Nominations

Horror Movies Deserve A Spot On The Podium As Well

One positive of this year’s show was the simple fact that these two movies even received this many nominations at all. Five Oscar nominations for The Substance and four for Nosferatu was a much higher number than most expected given the Academy’s history of refusing to pay attention to the horror genre, but the positives ended there. They are clearly making strides, realizing that these two horror movies were among the best of the year, but that doesn’t mean all that much until they start actually giving out awards to these kinds of films.

While some horror films have done well at the Oscars, they are extremely few and far between, especially when one considers the fact that the first horror movie to be nominated for Best Picture was The Exorcist in 1973, and The Silence of the Lambs continues to be the only horror film in the history of the Oscars to win the award. Films like Get Out, Black Swan, and The Sixth Sense managed to snag Best Picture nominations in their respective years, but those are some of the few films that managed to do so.

While the Oscars are not the be-all end-all of films, and these movies can be enjoyed and loved regardless of whether the members of the Academy decide they are worthy of earning one of their awards, seeing more horror representation at the Academy Awards would be a great step in the right direction. Everything Everywhere All at Once showed that silly sci-fi movies could make a big splash at the ceremony, Parasite proved that English-language movies aren’t the only ones worthy of recognition, and hopefully more horror movies will come along to show that it is a worthy genre.

Will Horror Movies Do Any Better At The 2026 Oscars?

Hopefully The 2025 Nominations Lead To More Wins In 2026

With the recent strides taken at the 2025 Oscars ceremony with the inclusion of more horror, there is a solid chance that the 2025 slate of horror movies will end up seeing some recognition by the Academy. The Black Phone 2 is set to come out in October, and while the first film didn’t get much awards recognition, the sequel could build off the better parts of the original. Blumhouse’s upcoming The Woman In The Yard made a pretty good first impression with its first trailer, and could make a big impact when it releases later in March.

However, the biggest horror movie coming out this year is Guillermo Del Toro’s version of Frankenstein. Del Toro has received 25 Oscar nominations across his career, winning a total of eight Oscars, three for Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006, four for The Shape of Water in 2017, and one in 2022 for his animated adaptation of Pinocchio. He has been a critical darling throughout his career, and hopefully, his dive into horror will show the Oscars how deserving the horror genre is of recognition.