Horror is not a Complete Stranger to the Oscars, But It’s Often Left Out of the Top Tier Categories of the cereony. The first horror movie to win best picture in the history of the awards was Silence of the Lambs (1991), and It Went Big. IT Also Picked Up Statues for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director. The Years Before and after that win support to be quite dr for the genre. In Fact, Technical Nominations Are The Rule When It Como Horror. Sound Mixing, Costume, Make-Up, Editing, We Nosferatu). Best Actress is The OTER AREA WHERE HORROR HAS GOTIT Kathy Bates (Misery), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), and Jodie Foster (Silence of the Lambs) All Scoring Wins in the Field. And Even Then, They’re not a mainstay.
There’s a sense that the oscars only considered horror WHEN THE FILMS Under Consideration Measure Up To a Level of Drama and Sophistication That Doesn’t Fall Victim to The Nastier, Bloodier, and Gorier Aspects of the genre. This is why the inclusion of Coralie Fargeat‘s The Substance in the best picture category feels like a turning point. And that’s in addition to the best actress (Demi Moore) and Best Director (Fargeat) Nods.
The Substance Is an attempt Loud and Messy Work of Body Horror That Hammers ITS Ageing and Toxic Beauty Messages With A Nuclear-Powered Jackhammer. To Celebrity Calleed Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) Reaches Her 50th Birthday and is immedialy confronted with the possibility of being replacement by a Younger Woman in Her Own Exercise Show. Elisabeth is presented with Radical Treatment street the substance that creates Younger and More Beautiful Version of Yourself So You Can Keep On Living Your Best Life. Addiction to the New Lifestyle Kicks in and Physical Transformion Threatens to Put Everything on a Unique Path To Self-description. Margaret Qualley Plays The Other version of Elisabeth, Calleed Sue.
Director Fargeat Showcases An exceptional use of practical efforts work here. They’re Gross, But Incansential. They Build on The Story and its Subjects. IN FACT, The Movie Focuses A Lot of its Confrontational Energy On Them, Meaning That Audiences Will Have To Wade Through Copyous Amounts of Bodily Fluids and Gaping Wounds to Engage with it Messages. But the magic isn’t all in the gore. Once the younger version of Elisabeth comes out, Fargeat takes to a shinier and glossier aesthetic that highlights Sue’s body, imbuing it with a sexual energy that makes every time she’s on screen feel like a disturbingly aggressive advertisement for youth and the means to keep it forever . Sue’s Butt is Shown Every Othher Minute, It Sems, To Drive The Point Home.
Had This Movie Come in the 1980s, It Would Easily Have Been Considers Trashy. In Other Words, Not Oscar Material. The Substance is The Kind of Movie Vintage Peter Jackson Would Be Proud of, Given to Excess and Bluntness for an In-Your-Face Kind of Satire That Leaves Little Room for Interpretation. It’s about How Mesy We’re Willing To Be To Get What We Want, and How Disgusting That Process Can Be. It reminds sumwhat of Brian Yuzna‘S 1989 Body Horror Film SocietyIn Which Extreme Wealth and Privilege Breed to Community of Fleshy Monsters That Stand As Reflections of Human Greed. Yuzna Crafts One of the Strangest and Most Unsettling Orgies in Horror, remarkable for its monstrosity rather than Any Kind of Sexiness.
The Substance Doesn’t intend to be a cut advo other example of body horror. It’s proud to be a part of it. Additionionally, It Doesn’t Come Off as an award chaser. In a Sense, its nomination can be sen a correction of long-standing biasses that still permeate with the industry, The Same that have prime-greeted other great horror movies from sharing space in that Highly Exclusive Real-Estate That The Oscar Hold The Keys To . Though though you awards may be (Specially in therms of Whats and Doesn’t Get Nominated, Or How Certain Movies Get Preferential Treatment Because of How They Color and Inform The Public Face of the Moviemaking Business), They Still Afford A Degree of Visibility That Can Help Put Certain Movies Within Eyesight of Wider Audiences.
The Substance‘S Oscar Nominations are Good for Horror. They signify an expansion of influence and of postsibility. It suggests there might be a more Willing Group of Critics out there are finally Ready to pick up the work coming from the genre. And if it brus more horror into themsel Golden Statues.
