“Nosferatu,” “Alien: Romulus,” “The Substance,” and More Give This Year’s Oscars a Jolt
The 97th Oscars arrive on March 2, and this year’s telecast will feature a more unsettling list of bloody, scary films than in recent history.
Writer/director Robbert Eggers’ chilling, gorgeously wrought Nosferatu has been nominated for four Oscars: Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography (Jarin Blaschke), Best Makeup & Hairstyling (David White, Traci Loader, and Suzanne Stokes-Munton, and Best Production Design (Craigh Lathrop, Set Decorator Beatrice Brenterová). Writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s body horror freakout The Substance was nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Fargeat, Best Actress in a Leading Role for Demi Moore, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, and Best Original Screenplay for Fargeat. Director Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, a rare interquel set between Ridley Scott’s original and James Cameron’s Aliens, got an Oscar nom for Visual Effects. Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With the Needle received its nomination for Best International Feature.
Horror movies haven’t historically enjoyed a ton of recognition come awards season. Horror fans have long lamented that their favorites are often beloved by millions, usually reliably get returns for their respective studios, and make the most of one of the most elastic, creative genres, yet rarely have any hardware to show for it. The 1992 Academy Awards were a Buffalo Bill-sized exception when Jonathan Demme’s iconic The Silence of the Lambs won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Demme, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins, and Best Actress for Jodie Foster.
This year has been different. Fargeat’s The Substance shocked and delighted audiences with its tale of how far an aging female star will go to remain relevant. Demi Moore’s scorching performance led to a Golden Globe for her—her first ever nomination, let alone win, in a long career—and her Oscar nom now confirms the film’s potency.
Eggers’ Nosferatu is perhaps the least surprising member of the group considering the subject’s rich cinematic history and Eggers’s well-established reputation as a master architect of brilliant, off-kilter movies, from The Witch to The Lighthouse to The Northman. It was actually surprising it didn’t get a Best Picture nod, considering how well it was received, but Eggers is no doubt thrilled his creative team has been given their due. His longtime cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and production designer Craig Lathrop got nominations, alongside makeup designer Traci Loader, hair designer Suzanne Stokes-Munton, and set decorator Beatrice Brenterová. All richly deserved for a period piece whose terror was partly derived from how real it felt.
For Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, the single nomination for visual effects is still a xenomorphic feather in his cap, and he could credibly claim he pulled off the best installment in the recent reboot of the Alien franchise. Alvarez’s tight, twisted tale hit that sweet spot first created by Scott and then revved up by Cameron. In Cailee Spaeny, Alvarez found a next-generation Ripley (named Rain), honoring the great Sigourney Weaver’s trailblazing heroine in the first two films. The visual effects team of Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin, and Shane Mahan did stellar work, giving these interplanetary monsters and settings the jaw-dripping terror required.
Finally, Magnus von Horn’s black-and-white The Girl With the Needle is loosely based on the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye and follows Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young, unemployed pregnant woman in 1919 Copenhagen who encounters Dagmar and his underground adoption agency, which seems to her, initially, like exactly the kind of compassionate solution mothers in need require. Karoline finds out the agency is anything but compassionate.
The 2025 Oscars are led by writer/director Jacques Audiard’s musical Emilia Pérez, with 13 nominations, followed by director Brady Corbert’s historical epic The Brutalist and Jon M. Chu’s musical juggernaut Wicked, each with 10 nominations. Close behind are Edward Berger’s Vatican-set thriller Conclave and James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, a look at Bob Dylan’s early years in New York, with eight a piece.
Yet it’s nice to know that these esteemed films, along with Sean Baker’s Anora, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, and Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, excellent films all, will be joined by those core four horror films representing the genre at this year’s Academy Awards. Somewhere, the original Xenomorph is nodding happily in her hive mound.
Featured image: L-r: Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen Hutter in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC; Demi Moore in “The Substance.” Courtesy MUBI. Xenomorph in 20th Century Studios’ ALIEN: ROMULUS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
