The horror genre has historically been looked down upon by film critics. Before superhero films were seen as “not being cinema,” horror was the only genre getting a bad rep and being underappreciated in prestigious film spaces. This could be because very little is required to make a horror movie, allowing it to be open to nearly anyone. We’ve seen incredibly successful horror movies such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity come from independent and low-budget filmmakers. Blumhouse has even made a successful career making low-budget horror movies that we’ve all come to love.
Update October 25, 2023: Looking to feature a highly regarded horror movie for your Halloween viewing? This article has been updated with more details about the Academy Award-nominated horror films and where you can stream them.
Horror is probably the easiest genre to start in and only really requires an idea, a script, a camera, and a few actors willing to help you make the movie. It is a genre that is both widely known and appreciated but also often an underdog. With the lack of appreciation for the films in this genre, along with genres like sci-fi, it obviously became very rare for a horror movie to be nominated at the Oscars. The Academy Awards are no indicator of what makes a good or bad movie, but it is an indicator of which movies are taken seriously by those respected in the industry. With that said, these are the only six horror movies ever to be nominated for Best Picture in Tinseltown’s most important night of the year.
6 The Exorcist (1973)
The Exorcist
- Release Date
- December 26, 1973
- Director
- William Friedkin
- Cast
- Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Horror
The Exorcist was the first horror film to ever be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The film was released back in 1973 and has become a classic in the genre, being infamous for the reactions it garnered from moviegoers at the time for being one of the scariest movies ever made.
It’s well known that audiences at the time were horrified by the movie that was based on a novel of the same name, which followed a girl, Regan, as her mother begins to believe that something is wrong with her, and when medical help provides no answers, she realizes something much more sinister must be going on with her daughter. The movie was nominated for an Academy Award at the 46th annual ceremony but lost to The Sting. However, it still went home with the Oscars for Best Screenplay and Best Sound.
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5 Jaws (1975)
Jaws
- Release Date
- June 18, 1975
- Director
- Steven Spielberg
- Cast
- Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Carl Gottlieb
- Rating
- PG-13
- Main Genre
- Adventure
The famous movie that made us all scared to go into the ocean. Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg, was an adaptation of a book of the same name about an island being terrorized by a man-eating great white shark during summer. The town sheriff, Martin Brody, intends to catch it with the help of a marine biologist and professional shark hunter. Only things won’t be as easy with the boat they use on their journey to the open sea.
Since its release, Jaws has become closely tied to pop culture, with multiple references to the film in different media outlets, especially its easily recognizable soundtrack. Upon initial release, it was the highest-grossing movie of all time before the release of the first Star Wars. Jaws was nominated for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Sound, and Best Picture at the 48th annual Academy Awards and won all but Best Picture. Despite that, and despite the fact that Spielberg didn’t get a Best Director nomination, the film was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2001, and it established Spielberg as the future of filmmaking.
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4 The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Silence of the Lambs
- Release Date
- February 1, 1991
- Director
- jonathan demme
- Cast
- Jodie Foster, Scott Glenn, Anthony Hopkins, Ted Levine, Brooke Smith, Anthony Heald
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Crime
The psychological horror thriller The Silence of the Lambs made history when it became the first and only horror film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The film, also based on a book of the same name, stars Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster as the now iconic Hannibal Lecter, an infamous psychiatrist turned cannibal, and Clarice Starling, an FBI detective working to catch another loose serial killer, Buffalo Bill.
Like many other movies on this list, it went on to become one of the most well-known films, with iconic lines and imagery. The Silence of the Lambs impressively swept the Big Five Oscars at the 64th annual Academy Awards: Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. It made history by being the third movie ever to achieve the feat.
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3 The Sixth Sense (1999)
The Sixth Sense
- Release Date
- August 6, 1999
- Director
- M. Night Shyamalan
- Cast
- Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Trevor Morgan, Donnie Wahlberg
- Rating
- PG-13
- Main Genre
- Drama
One of M. Night Shyamalan’s most famous and memorable films, The Sixth Sense, shocked audiences everywhere with its cleverly executed plot twist. The film starred Bruce Willis as a child psychologist and a young Haley Joel Osment as a boy who claims he can see dead people. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, but didn’t bring home any of them. It was hard to find a Hollywood horror debut as successful as this one until Jordan Peele blew the industry’s minds with his feature debut, Get Out.
Despite that, though, the movie still stands as probably one of the most quoted films in other worlds of film and television and gives an entirely different experience when rewatched because of the foreshadowing of the iconic twist. Let’s be real: It’s also pretty damn scary.
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2 Black Swan (2010)
Black Swan
- Release Date
- December 3, 2010
- Director
- Darren Aronofsky
- Cast
- Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Benjamin Millepied
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Thriller
Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman, is a psychological horror that follows a ballerina descending into madness over competing for a role in a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2010 and also starred Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder.
The film was nominated for five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing. Unfortunately, the movie lost the highest reward to The King’s Speech. At least Natalie Portman got the much-deserved prize for Best Actress.
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1 Get Out (2017)
Get Out
- Release Date
- February 24, 2017
- Director
- Jordan Peele
- Cast
- Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson
- Rating
- R
- Main Genre
- Horror
The most recent horror Best Picture nomination was back in 2018, with Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, Get Out, a psychological horror that follows a Black man who discovers dark secrets about his white girlfriend’s family. Like much of Peele’s work, the film tackles the issue of race in a unique and horrifying twist. Prior to the film’s release, Peele was known as a comedian, with notable works like Key & Peele, so it shocked the world when he released a well-written and -directed horror film that explored racism in a way it was never explored before and sparked the production of more of his films about race.
The film was nominated for Best Picture in the 90th annual Academy Awards in addition to Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actor. Despite not winning the coveted Best Picture Oscar, Peele became the third person to earn nominations in the categories of Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay with a feature debut while also making history as the first Black writer to win Best Original Screenplay. It’s hard to argue against the film’s success and how it started Peele’s solid career in Hollywood.
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This story originally appeared on Movieweb
