Will ‘Beau is Afraid’ scare up a Best Picture Oscar nomination?

Genres films are often overlooked by academy voters and none more so than horror. Horror films have been a cornerstone of cinema since the inception of the format with George Méliès‘ “Le Manoir du Diable” often considered the first horror movie. Since then, we’ve had hundreds of important horror movies including “Nosferatu,” “Psycho,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Halloween,” and “The Shining.” These have all influenced not only the horror genre but the film industry at large in one way or another. Yet, we’ve only had six films nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in Academy Awards history. Let’s take a look at them.

The first horror film ever nominated for Best Picture was William Friedkin‘s “The Exorcist,” which follows Max von Sydow‘s priest trying to rid a 12-year-old girl of the entity possessing her. The film made a big, bloody splash at the 1974 Academy Awards, garnering 10 nominations in total and winning Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay for William Peter Blatty, who adapted the book from his own horror novel of the same name. The movie was also nominated for Best Director for Friedkin, Best Actress for Ellen Burstyn, Best Supporting Actor for Jason Miller, and Best Supporting Actress for Linda Blair. However, “The Sting” won Best Picture that year.

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Voters only waited two years to nominate the next horror flick for best pic with Steven Spielberg‘s “Jaws” claiming four Oscar nominations at the 1976 Oscars. That film follows a police chief (Roy Scheider), a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss), and a shark hunter (Robert Shaw) tracking down the great white shark that has been attacking beachgoers in a seaside town. The film had a fairly successful night at the Oscars, too, winning three out of its four nominations. Those wins were for Best Sound, Best Editing, and Best Original Score. The only nomination it lost was Best Picture, which went to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Next up was the big one: “The Silence of the Lambs.” One of the best movies ever made, the film follows Jodie Foster‘s Clarice Starling, a junior FBI agent, working with infamous cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to catch another deranged killer. Nominated for seven Oscars in total, “The Silence of the Lambs” made history on multiple fronts. It became the first horror film to win Best Picture and also became the third and most recent movie to win the big five awards at the Oscars: Picture, Director (for Jonathan Demme), Actor (for Hopkins), Actress (for Foster), and a writing award (“Lambs” won Adapted Screenplay for Ted Tally). Only the aforementioned “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1976) and “It Happened One Night” (1935) matched this feat.

“The Sixth Sense” was next up, claiming six Oscar nominations in 2000. The film, from M. Night Shyamalan, follows Bruce Willis as a child psychologist who works with a patient (Haley Joel Osment) who says he can see and talk to dead people. It was nominated for Picture, Director for Shyamalan, Supporting Actor for Osment, Supporting Actress for Toni Collette, Original Screenplay, and Editing. The film left the Oscars empty-handed, however, as “American Beauty” won Best Picture. “The Sixth Sense” did become the first original horror movie nominated for Best Picture, however, as the three horrors previously nominated for the top prize were all adapted from novels.

Eleven years later in 2011, horror returned to the top category with Darren Aronofsky‘s “Black Swan,” which depicts a ballet dancer (Natalie Portman) on the verge of stardom being pushed to the limits by her artistic director (Vincent Cassel) and her rival (Mila Kunis). She slowly begins to lose her grip on reality as her life becomes a nightmare. “Black Swan” won Best Actress for Portman and was also nominated for four other Oscars including Picture and Director for Aronofsky. “The King’s Speech” won Best Picture that year.

The most recent horror film nominated for Best Picture was Jordan Peele‘s seminal “Get Out,” which follows an African-American man visiting his White girlfriend’s family for a weekend and slowly realizing something eerie is afoot. Peele’s movie changed the horror genre completely (elevated, social horror is now its own sub-genre thanks to Peele) and was rewarded with four Oscar nominations in 2018: for Picture, Director for Peele, Actor for Daniel Kaluuya, and Original Screenplay for Peele. It won the screenplay bid.

That is the last time a horror film was nominated for Best Picture despite a flurry of excellent, acclaimed horror pics including “The Witch,” “Hereditary,” “Midsommar,” and “The Lighthouse.” Could any horror films break through this year, however? Well, as welcome as that would be… it doesn’t look like it. The only horror film that features in our Oscars odds chart for Best Picture is “Beau is Afraid,” which was released earlier this year on April 14.

That A24 film, from “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” director Ari Aster, follows Joaquin Phoenix as a paranoid man named Beau who sets out on a surreal journey home to attend his mother’s funeral. The movie received positive reviews from critics but doesn’t have the overwhelming support from them that might have pushed it further into awards conversations. Instead, it sits on 67% on Rotten Tomatoes. It currently lies outside of our predicted 10 nominees for Best Picture: “Oppenheimer,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Poor Things,” “Barbie,” “The Holdovers,” “Maestro,” “American Fiction,” “Past Lives,” “The Color Purple,” “Anatomy of a Fall.” It’s also not expected to reap any other bids, either, which hurts its chances. If it was set for a writing bid or an acting nomination, that could have propelled it toward a cumulative Best Picture nomination. Alas, it doesn’t even look like this will be Phoenix’s most talked-about film of the year — he has the historical epic “Napoleon” coming out soon.

So, it looks like there won’t be any horror representation at the Oscars this year — certainly not in the Best Picture category, anyway. But here’s one to watch out for at a future Academy Awards. Robert Eggers‘ remake of “Nosferatu.” The horror filmmaker helmed “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” and will deliver fans a new version of the vampiric tale in 2024 with Willem Dafoe and Bill Skarsgård, playing Count Orlok, at the center of his cast.

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