It has been a huge year for horror movies at the box office, but will this translate at the upcoming Oscars?
Get Out started the year off with an unexpected bang, debuting in February (often regarded as a month where studios dump their weaker fare) with stellar reviews and an exceptional performance at the box office. With an astonishing 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a final gross of $175 million domestically, the horror satire by first time director Jordan Peele was an unequivocal success. Many are still talking about it, having pierced the cultural zeitgeist, to the point that it is being included in Oscar predictions for major categories like Best Picture and Best Director.
While I expect the success story combined with the quality of the film itself will help propel Get Out to Oscar glory, there are some other buzzy horror films that could sneak in too. And they have both had wildly different runs since their respective releases.
It is already the no. 5 movie of the year in just three weeks of release, grossing over $266 million. This, despite being an R-rated film about a killer clown terrorizing children, no less. The marketing was very influential in getting butts in seats, with promises of a fun if scary thrill ride. While still classified as a horror movie, much of the narrative arc centers on the coming-of-age bonding of a group of misfit teens, sharing more in common with Stand by Me than, say, The Conjuring. The imagery can be scary, especially when Pennywise (the brilliant Bill Skarsgård) attacks the kids, but it doesn’t leave you shaken to the core by the end credits.
mother!, on the other hand, has left the mainstream moviegoing audience viscerally angry. While trailers depicted a home invasion thriller with fun elements of horror, audiences had an entirely different experience at the movie itself. Without spoiling too much, the film is highly metaphorical and deliberately paced, teasing out its mystery until the absolutely bonkers final 30 minutes. That third act is a dizzying parade of hellish nightmare fuel that culminates in eating [redacted], beatings, gunfire, and carnage, with a final twist that verbally angered some in my theater. It is the movie embodiment of “that escalated quickly.”
Unlike It, however, mother! has really stayed with me since seeing it. I recognize that some view it as self-indulgent or even simplistic in its allegories, but I found it to be a bold, masterful piece of work that only director Darren Aronofsky could create. It is in no way subtle (even if some didn’t understand what he was going for), but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Aronofsky has never taken a subtle approach, as seen by Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain and my favorite, Black Swan. mother! is a visceral filmgoing experience, with some of the best sound design I’ve ever heard on film. If you can, sit directly in the middle of the theater, as I did. It is a radical experience, sonically.
mother! also features what I believe to be Jennifer Lawrence’s best performance yet. As a woman on the verge of a breakdown over the many uninvited guests who enter her house, she expertly evolves her performance from passive and earthy to aggressive and vengeful. Michelle Pfeiffer is also memorable in her few minutes of screen time, as a wickedly meddlesome woman who becomes a nuisance to Lawrence’s character.
Unfortunately, the film has been dragged through the mud, with one reviewer calling it the worst movie of the century. It also received the dreaded grade of an F on CinemaScore, showing that mainstream audiences were baffled and upset by the film. It has only grossed $13 million in two weeks, and Paramount is taking the “no such thing as bad publicity” approach by advertising these negative reactions, as if to say, “see this movie… if you dare.”
Some artistic types will likely love mother!, though, so it has a better shot than It of being in the Oscar conversation. Lawrence already has four Oscar nominations (and one win) while Pfeiffer also has four nominations but has never won. Both could certainly show up in a weaker year, but as more palatable movies show up, their chances are looking worse and worse. I don’t see mother! getting any above-the-line support, but it richly deserves to get into Best Sound Mixing. We’ve seen movies like Transformers get into this category before, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility for it to show up there.
Meanwhile, It probably won’t be looked at as an Oscar contender for anything outside of Best Makeup and Hairstyling. The makeup on Pennywise is very affecting, and the prosthetics on other creatures in the film are well done. If Suicide Squad can win an Oscar for Makeup, we definitely shouldn’t be counting out something like It.
In a year of great horror movies, I would love to see It and mother! join Get Out in being recognized by the Academy. The demographics of voters continue to change for the better, letting in more young and diverse artists, who will hopefully be more open-minded to such films, as opposed to the stodgy old guard.