By Charlie Kendellen
The Academy has a rather notable history of dismissing and undervaluing the horror genre — for instance, Toni Collette was unjustifiably snubbed for her career defining performance in Ari
Aster’s directorial debut Hereditary (2018). Only one horror film has ever won best picture at the Oscars — The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and only six horror films have ever even been nominated! This is by no means due to a shortage of great horror films in Hollywood, but rather an outdated preconception of horror as a ‘low brow’ genre that seldom gets taken seriously as an art form.
Coralie Fargeat has been on many of our radar’s since her gut punch of a debut with her 2017 film Revenge. Her subversive horror film from last year The Substance has been received surprisingly well by both audiences and Academy members alike. Demi Moore gives a truly bold and fearless performance as Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging fitness instructor and TV personality. Fargeat’s film is by no means an Oscar bait or crowd pleasing film, which is why it is so substantially surprising that this film has been nominated for Best Picture for this award’s season.
The Substance (2024) has had an excellent campaign due to Mubi’s dedicated marketing strategies, which has ensured not a single person on the planet has missed this film, unless you have quite literally been living under a rock, sheltered from The Substance’s universal praise and critical acclaim.
Fargeat’s film, alongside Moore’s performance, is truly subversive due to its delightful homage to the splatter horror genre, which would never be so much as looked at by the Academy — due to their own preconceived and pretentious notions as to what qualifies as ‘highbrow’ art. Moore gives a career best as she truly sheds her sex appeal whilst simultaneously shedding her clothes.
Notably, Coralie Fargeat is the only woman nominated for best director this year, which might just be all the more impressive given her film acts as a huge middle finger to Hollywood and its ideas about aging women on screen. However, Fargeat is not immune to criticism as her style of framing women often plays into the male gaze, which sexualises and objectifies women in front of the camera. With that being said, it can be argued that Fargeat’s vision utilises this scopophilic gaze in order to further prove her point and the film’s not-so-subtle messaging.
All things considered, there is no surefire way of telling what the academy is thinking. After all, Bong Joon-Ho won the Oscar for Best Picture for Parasite in 2020, to much surprise (and delight)! Giving the well-deserved Oscar to The Substance could be a turning point for the Academy and for the horror genre going forward.