Sinners Makes Oscars History
The Super Bowl for cinema lovers is right around the corner, and we finally know which teams are going to play! (I don’t like sports.) Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was almost a given, snatching up thirteen noms in total. However, there was one surprise title to take home the most nominations and dethrone a few titleholders for most Oscar noms in a single year.
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a vampire period piece set in the South, took the crown with 16 nominations. That’s 2 more than Titanic, All About Eve, and La La Land, all of which have 14 nominations. Imagine usurping James Cameron. I would never shut up about it.
While that is impressive on its own, Sinners is also a horror movie. If you have ever followed awards season–and the Oscars especially–you will know that horror historically isn’t a genre taken seriously by the Academy. While we have seen such films win for categories like Best Adapted Screenplay (Get Out) and Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins, Silence of the Lambs, which also won Best Picture), Sinners is the first to be broadly nominated like this.
There are also a number of other potential firsts that come along with these nominations. Autumn Durald Arkapaw is nominated for Best Cinematography, and her win would mark the first time a woman has won the award. Coogler is nominated for Best Director, and his potential win would be the first time a Black person has ever won an Oscar in that category.
Horror is just as nuanced as any other genre
With Sinners being recognized by the Academy for what it is, which is much more than just a simple horror film, it can hopefully open the doors to other such films in the future. Horror doesn’t have to simply mean scary or gory; many of them are allegorical. The best way to explore the themes just so happens to be through unsettling means.
It’s going to be a tough race this year, that’s for sure.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
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