If Horror Was Recognised by the Oscars 2019

Horror a notoriously been getting ignored by the Oscar Academy for years now with the only films in the genre to get a Best Picture Nomination being The Silence of the Lambs (which is more of a crime thriller), The Exorcist, Jaws, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan and Get Out. We have seen a couple in acting too, but in recent years, the call for more horror performances to get recognised as been increasing.

Today I am going to look at the films of 2019 in the horror genre and see which ones could have been put on at least the nominations list, this won’t just be for the major categories, we will be looking at some of the technical awards too, we will also not be saying these films are always the best, remember, when it comes to the technical awards, even some of the worst films have awards to their names.

First Acting.

Lupita Nyong’o – Us

Lupita gives us one of the most haunting dual performances in horror history, with the Adelaide wife and mother, showing signs of paranoia, while also being loving, until Red appears, with a broken voice telling us the disturbing story of her life and why she has come for Adelaide. The two contrasting characters are performed with ease, both being wonderful to watch, while also giving us a chance to re-watch the film to understand character motivations. This is a performance that will stick with you even if you are not the biggest fan of the film.

Florence Pugh – Midsommar

Florence Pugh did end up getting an Oscar nomination for her work in Little Women, and to be fair she has had an incredible acting year, with Fighting With My Family completing her hat trick. In Midsommar she plays Dani, a young lady who has seen her family die suddenly, with her about to lose her boyfriend, she is stuck in a relationship neither are overly happy with and decide to spend time at a Swedish village for the solstice, here she gets to battle her grief, which Pugh effortlessly gives us a stunning performance which is filled with all the pain she is feeling.

Rebecca Ferguson – Doctor Sleep

Rebecca Ferguson does play the villain in the much anticipated sequel to both the novel and the film, Rose the Hat is a menacing villain that shows no remorse for her actions, controls the people in her cult and gives us some of the most horrific moments in the horror genre this year. Rebecca gives us the performance that is both calm, seductive at times and filled with terror herself at times, one of the supporting roles that could easily have picked up a nomination.

When it comes to directors, it is such a competitive category this year, it would be hard to give an honest couple of names for this outside the ones we will discuss more, Jordan Peele, Mike Flanagan or Ari Aster, I don’t feel any of them have been snubbed as they would have struggled against four of the five on the list any year. This would also be reflected in Original Screenplay and Adapted Screenplay, it would be hard to knock anybody off either list for a horror film.

Best Cinematography is the only category that gave horror a look in, with The Lighthouse for Jarin Blaschke’s work. Rightfully deserved too, we might sound like a broken record here, only we have to put Midsommar up for this category too, the film has some of the best shots you will see in film this year and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski could easily have been give the nod here.

Best Film Editing was a category that gave us some surprises anyway, with Joker, Jojo Rabbit and The Irishman being three that could easily be replaced, we are looking at horror though, the leading choice here would be.

Mike Flanagan – Doctor Sleep

When it comes to this movie, we had a lot to get through, the huge time between the two films, the battle between King’s vision and Kubrick’s vision, Flanagan does bring us a wonderful film. The editing in this film is brilliant, because we do the seemingly effortless transitions between characters and locations, the old and the new, everything looks perfectly natural, which even gives us moments of fear, because we know certain evils that are coming our way.

Production Design, this is a category that I always look at as one that brings us into the film, horror has always been able to bring us one of the best for using location to increase the horror within the film, usually in a tighter scale.

Craig Lathrop – The Lighthouse

Watching The Lighthouse, we find ourselves joining the two men on a remote island which sees them slowly descend into madness, the two main roomed locations so us how contained the horror is, while we wait to see the mystery around the light room, while the island is also haunting with endless questions going on within it.

Henrick Svensson – Midsommar

Midsommar is one film that creates the festival for the events to take place in, the house designs are beautiful, making us feel even more uncomfortable in the film too, with secrets in the walls with the designs on them, this is one production design, which is one you could study for days, weeks or even months to get the clues within them.

Best Achievement in Costume Design, how the characters look is important, this is a category that has seen people talking because of certain films that aren’t including over Joker which is included, we could have seen many different films this year, with the clear pick for this one being,

Andrea Flesch – Midsommar

Midsommar does show us how the cult looks with their traditional outfits, showing their different statuses within the group, showing just how out of place newcomers could be too. The highlight of the costume design comes in the final third of the film with the beautiful floral dress that Dani must wear for the ceremony and let’s not forget about that bear costume.

Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling is a category that usually gets the biggest range of films, a lot of this goes into how you read the movies you are watching, for the sake of this article, I am looking just at makeup being used to create something in a horror film, with An American Werewolf in London winning this award in the past.

Natasa Krstic, Adrien Morot, Tijana Saletovic, Shane Shisheboran, Martina Sobic-Dodocic and Vague Vartanian – Crawl

Crawl might well be a creature feature that doesn’t have the most realistic looking real alligators, but when it comes the injuries both Haley and Dave receive, we see some of the most brutal makeup effects of the year, from just bites, to full body parts being ripped off.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

First off, there are way too many names to list on this one, I don’t want to miss anybody off the list. This is a horror that uses practical effects to create each different creature we meet, each one has a different aspect to make them terrifying and this only adds to the horror in the film.

These are just a few suggestions that could have been up for Oscars this year, I have skipped over Visual Effects because I don’t feel any horror brings enough on that front, when it comes to the Sound Editing and Mixing, I also don’t feel there is enough for any film to be put ahead of any of the nominations.

Which horror films do you think could have been nominated for Oscars in which categories?