It's time for the Oscars to take horror seriously

WHEN DEMI MOORE WON THE GOLDEN GLOBE for her turn in Coralie Fargeat's body-horror hit The Substance on Jan. 5, she shared in her acceptance speech that it was the first real award she'd received in her more than 45 years in Hollywood.

- MEGAN MCCLUSKEY

While recognition of the 62-year-old actor was long overdue, it was perhaps a surprise that it came for a role that involved donning grotesque prosthetics and graphically birthing a younger version of herself, considering horror's grim awards-season track record.

In the nearly 100 years since the Oscars debuted, a grand total of seven horror movies (now including The Substance, with Fargeat also receiving a nod for Best Director) have been nominated for Best Picture. Only 1991's The Silence of the Lambs-which is also a detective story-has won. A statuette for Moore, who received her first ever nomination on Jan. 23, would make her just the seventh actor to receive an Oscar for their role in a horror movie. It's an egregiously low success rate for a genre that's delivered some of film's most memorable performances.

And Moore is just the chosen representative of a year that produced many stellar turns in a wide range of scary movies. There was Hugh Grant as a fiendishly charming zealot in Heretic, Naomi Scott as a pop star fighting both literal and figurative demons in Smile 2, and Justice Smith as a shy teen who develops an obsession with a cult horror series in I Saw the TV Glow.