Though there are notable exceptions — Jordan Peele’s Get Out is the biggest recent example — the Academy Awards tend to give horror a very wide berth. Horror fans have learned not to care much about what Oscar says, but it still stings, especially when outstanding performances get overlooked.
Here are 10 excellent performances from the last 10 years that were excluded from Hollywood’s biggest awards — ignored by squeamish voters who’re apparently reluctant to recognise performers skilled at blending blood, guts, and emotional nuance and complexity onscreen.
Mia Goth, Pearl and X
Ti West’s bloodbath X became a word-of-mouth hit in 2022, thanks in no small part to Mia Goth — who played two very different characters (aspiring porn star Maxine and elderly farm wife Pearl), an unsettling meta-element that added to the film’s eerie twists. Then, surprise! Goth returned in X prequel Pearl a few months later, an alarmingly detailed portrait of her ageing X character as a deranged, stardom-obsessed young farm wife. The fact that Goth co-wrote Pearl wasn’t even enough to turn any Oscar heads — and the lack of Oscar horror attention is something she’s spoken out about recently — but she’ll get one last shot with West’s franchise when X sequel MaXXXine arrives later this year.
Lupita Nyong’o, Us
Here’s another actor overlooked despite impressively playing dual roles in a single movie. Us’ protagonist and her “Tethered” döppelganger looked identical but were otherwise completely different, not just in the way they moved and spoke, but in the psychic energy that emitted from their pores. Nyong’o had already won an Oscar for her feature-film debut in 12 Years a Slave six years prior — so you know the Academy is well aware of her talents. Its members just… didn’t feel the need to honour them in this particular instance.
Stephen Yeun, Nope
While we’re on the subject of Jordan Peele movies — especially since Get Out’s many accolades included a Best Actor nomination for Daniel Kaluuya (who ended up winning Supporting Actor a few years later for Jesus and the Black Messiah) — we’d like to ask why none of Nope’s actors got any Oscar notice. Kaluuya was solid as always, as was Keke Palmer as his character’s more animated sister, but Yeun’s tricky blend of space cowboy and child-stardom casualty brought an extra layer of unease to Nope’s examination of spectacle gone wrong.
Toni Collette, Hereditary
Collette was nominated for her thoughtful performance in an earlier horror film, The Sixth Sense. But overlooking her powerful turn as a woman who discovers her recently deceased mother was into some dangerous weirdness — and her mounting terror as she realises mum’s bad vibes are still reverberating, big time — is frankly inexcusable.
Florence Pugh, Midsommar
After Hereditary, writer-director Ari Aster made another chilling film with a memorable leading performance — Pugh’s layered, devastating dissection of grief, frustration, and fury, ending in one of cinema’s all-time great (and most flower-bedecked) cathartic moments — which, similarly, was met with a shrug by a certain purveyor of golden statuettes.
Amber Midthunder, Prey
Prey was a streaming Hulu film — offering a convenient out for Academy voters who, let’s face it, would likely have ignored Midthunder’s fierce, physically dynamic Predator fighter under any circumstances. Still, Prey offered proof that just because a film happens to be an entry in a long-running horror franchise, it’s still capable of standing on its own as something great — especially when it’s buoyed by such a captivating lead performance.
Elisabeth Moss, The Invisible Man
After Universal’s Dark Universe crumpled in on itself, The Invisible Man revitalized the studio’s hopes for its iconic horror franchise. A smart story update put the focus not on the monster, but on the monster’s target, with Moss as the ex-girlfriend he’ll do anything to control, though she soon proves she’s nowhere near as fragile as he thought. The film managed to bring a timely urgency to its familiar sci-fi story, with the formidable Moss leading the charge through all the gaslighting and dirty fighting.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Candyman
Another iconic horror franchise, another clever and timely update — this time thanks to director Nia DaCosta and co-writer Jordan Peele, not to mention Abdul-Mateen’s gripping performance as an artist who becomes dangerously entangled with a certain gruesome urban legend. Naturally, the Oscars looked the other way.
Emily Blunt, A Quiet Place
We had to actually double-check the maths on this one, because how is it possible that perpetual critical darling Blunt didn’t get a nod for A Quiet Place — a huge hit that racked up other nominations and wins galore, including a Screen Actors Guild Award for Supporting Actress? Apparently if you stick aliens in a movie, the Academy Awards will find reason to forget about, say, a character who does everything to hold her family together in the post-apocalypse, including giving birth alone while trying to keep herself and her newborn from making any sounds.
Nicolas Cage, Mandy
People are finally starting to take Cage seriously again, and this outrageous, wildly trippy movie has a lot to do with the ubiquitous B-movie actor’s rise from “laughing at” to “laughing with.” We didn’t really think he’d get nominated for Mandy, but wouldn’t that chainsaw fight have been a hell of an Oscar clip?
While you’re here, why not check out Gizmodo Australia’s guide to what’s streaming this month on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Stan, Binge and more. We’ve also got one for all the good movies coming out in 2023 if that’s more your thing.