Given that the very first Oscars in 1929, just 8 scary flicks have actually obtained a desirableBest Picture nomination That includes this year’s nod for The Material.
According to the Yahoo Ideal Photo Leaderboard, it’s not most likely that The Material has the juice to take home the leading reward. Just one scary flick has actually ever before done so– The Silence of the Lambs — which mored than 3 years earlier. Yet the body scary movie starring Demi Moore may still have an effect on the academy.
In The Material, Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Shimmer, a starlet that’s terminated from her work organizing a health and fitness television program on her 50th birthday celebration. She infuses herself with a mystical material that provides a far better variation of herself, mosting likely to severe sizes to restore the love her more youthful self experienced from Hollywood elites.
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Zoran Samardzija, a teacher of movie and tv at Columbia University Chicago, informed Yahoo Amusement that the ridiculing nature of The Material may have been what attracted academy citizens in the “practice of various other non-horror” Oscar-nominated flicks that slam movie industry, like Sundown Blvd and Mulholland Drive.
” It handles the persecution of females,” Samardzija stated. “ The Material is really monstrous, yet it has that ridiculing aspect that makes it a lot more highbrow.”
Scary flicks aren’t often recognized by the Oscars– a shock to some, as it needs acting expertise, creative story building and one-of-a-kind visuals to make something well scary. That’s not an indicator that there’s something fundamentally incorrect with the category, however.

A scene from The Material. (Mubi/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Samardzija stated that the Oscars currently have a tendency to prefer dramatization over all various other styles. That consists of funnies, though they often won throughout the very early years of the honors event. When the variety of Best Photo candidates introduced yearly raised from 5 to 10 in 2009, that likewise unlocked for even more styles to obtain honors. Still, there have actually just been 3 scary Best Photo candidates ever since: Black Swan, Venture Out and The Material.
There’s a lengthy background of scary efficiency snubs at the Oscars, and just 4 females have actually ever before won Ideal Starlet for a scary duty: Ruth Gordon for Rosemary’s Child in 1969, Kathy Bates for Suffering in 1990, Jodie Foster for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991 and Natalie Portman for Black Swan in 2010. That becomes part of what makes Demi Moore’s frontrunner condition in this year’s race so engaging, as she acquire honors at the Golden Globes, the Movie Critics Option Honors and the droop Honors.
What establishes Moore aside from various other scary starlets to win those honors is simply exactly how unusual and over the top The Material is. Towards the movie’s end, audiences are swallowed up in body scary brimming with gore and disorder, deviating from the 4 Ideal Actress-winning efficiencies that came in the past.

Demi Moore in The Material (Mubi/Courtesy Everett Collection)
” I believe The Material is most likely one of the most viscerally visuals scary movie that’s ever before been chosen,” Samardzija stated, including that its toughness in the eyes of the academy may originate from “the toughness of Demi Moore’s efficiency.”
It assists that Moore, that has actually been a house name for years, is cherished by Hollywood and is getting what lots of view as long-overdue appreciation. Samardzija stated several of the leading honors at the Oscars have a “life time success facet” that takes into consideration a candidate’s body of job instead of the one particular efficiency for which they’re especially being identified.
In her Golden World approval speech, Moore stated that three decades earlier, a manufacturer informed her she was a “snacks starlet,” that made her seem like an honor win “had not been something I was enabled to have.”
” I commemorate this as a pen of my integrity and of the love that is driving me and for the present of doing something I enjoy and being advised that I do belong,” she stated. Her speech went viral, developing energy for her success throughout the honor period.
Also if Moore does not win the Oscar and The Material goes home empty-handed, it still made an unexpected $77 million at package workplace. Scary is presently the fastest-growing movie category, having doubled its market share from 4.87% in 2013 to 10.08% in 2023, according toindustry data service the Numbers It likewise had an excellent year in 2024, with critical and theatrical successes like Nosferatu, Longlegs and Smile 2.
Horror-centric streaming solution Shudder is opening up the door for independent and little workshop category flicks to locate a larger target market, Samardzija stated.
The particular niche category of body scary might likewise come to be a lot more prominent as individuals attempt to reproduce the success of The Material — or representatives start to see that target markets can endure and indulge in that degree of gore. Body scary flick With Each Other was just one of the highest-selling procurements at the 2025 Sundance Movie Celebration.
” There suffices success to the category that it never ever passes away,” Samardzija stated, providing scary the exact same undestroyable feature typically presented upon its most ominous bad guys. Moore and The Material have actually instilled the category with brand-new life.