Yahoo Lifestyle Demi Moore’s Golden Globes win proves that it’s time to take horror seriously
The Golden Globes often serves as the unofficial start to the glittering awards season, and this year’s ceremony, which took place on 5 January, was no exception. As always, some projects are always certain to be trophy fodder (Brady Corbet’s critically acclaimed The Brutalist is set to be an awards-season darling), while others were surprise winners.
For her nuanced take as the youth-chasing Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance, Demi Moore is more than a worthy recipient of the Best Actress trophy – and the whispers about Oscar contention are well deserved. However, The Substance (in itself, a surprise hit, having been passed over by major studios and released on the streaming platform Mubi) is in no way a musical or comedy – the category in which it was placed by the Golden Globes powers that be. While it possesses some revolting, garish scenes that are bleakly comic in its delivery, The Substance is openly and proudly a horror film – yet few mainstream award ceremonies openly celebrate horror or offer accolades as a category in its own right.
It's a crying shame that horror is rarely taken seriously by critics, despite being overwhelmingly popular with audiences. As a genre, horror consistently performs well at the box office, with scary films accounting for approximately $1 billion worth of annual ticket sales, or 10 per cent of moviegoing in the US and Canada. Horror films perform similarly well over on UK shores too, having doubled its marketshare here over the last decade. Those seeking a thrill evidently love going to the cinema – where you can have a more immersive, and therefore undeniably scarier, experience – with the genre bucking box office trends; cinema attendance across the world has been in decline since the 2020 pandemic, with many choosing to wait until titles hit streaming services.
Horror films, on average, also tend to be cheaper to make. The Substance was made on a budget of $17.5 million, but grossed more than $78 million worldwide. In a world where it’s harder than ever to make a profit from artistic endeavours, it’s maddening that a whole genre can be so willingly overlooked.
Of course, the arts aren’t necessarily always about dollar signs, with many wanting their work to share a deeper message. Horror, then, serves as a vehicle for artists and audiences to confront fears and offer thoughtful, often metaphorical, explorations about society at large. The Substance, for example, is a grisly parable warning about misogyny and body objectification. Sydney Sweeney’s Immaculate explores themes of reproductive rights and women's bodily autonomy. Meanwhile, Nosferatu, starring Lily-Rose Depp, explores female ferality and the dangers of repressed desire, all through Robert Eggers’ queasy gaze. Each film shares a common desire to send sudden shudders rippling down our spines, but the scares are used to offer audiences probing and uncomfortable questions about our existence.
Critics who appear snooty about the genre tend to be harkening back to the days of ham – the delightfully silly Hammer House of Horror series, the '90s slasher flicks like Scream, or the gross-out gore of productions such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While these films serve their own purpose, to only see horror films as those that are bloody and bizarre is reductive.
The last decade has seen horror mature away from cheap jump-scares and proven more than worthy of serious award contention; Get Out landing an Oscar in 2018 should only pave the way for more films from the genre to be considered. Horror's enduring popularity, and bleak ability to reveal grim truths about society, means it should no longer be confined to the shadows.
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