The Academy tends to overlook horror films. There have been occasional exceptions: Get Out won Best Original Screenplay, Kathy Bates won Best Actress for Misery, and The Silence of the Lambs swept the main five categories. But generally speaking, Academy voters don’t have a lot of love for the horror genre.
Even in the age of so-called “elevated horror,” the Academy has a tough time taking scary movies seriously. These horror movie performances are just as powerful as any of the Oscar-bait dramas the Academy usually nominates.
10 Florence Pugh As Dani Ardor In Midsommar
In Midsommar, Florence Pugh plays Dani Ardor, who’s trapped in a toxic relationship while reeling from the murder-suicide of her entire family. Without any horror elements, this would already be a pretty harrowing drama.
Pugh carries the whole movie as she travels to the Hårga cult’s commune, gets given all kinds of psychedelic drugs, and the movie becomes a gonzo acid trip. No matter how bizarre things get, Pugh’s powerful performance keeps the story focused on her character's grief.
9 Robert Shaw As Quint In Jaws
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is as much about the fighting between the three guys on the boat as it is about the shark they’re trying to kill. Robert Shaw’s veteran shark hunter Quint offers a gruff, grizzled counterpoint to Roy Scheider’s everyman police chief Brody and Richard Dreyfuss’ dorky marine biologist Hooper. According to The Guardian, Shaw’s own struggles with alcohol during production ended up feeding into his character’s hard-drinking persona.
Shaw should’ve landed a Best Supporting Actor nod for the Indianapolis speech alone. He creates a haunting image in viewers’ minds with nothing but words. His monologue is a more powerful telling of the Indianapolis disaster than the $40 million Nicholas Cage movie about it.
8 Boris Karloff As The Monster In Frankenstein
James Whale’s Frankenstein isn’t a wholly faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel – for starters, the lead character’s name is changed from Victor to Henry – but it did capture the themes of playing God and, thanks to Boris Karloff’s poignant turn as “The Monster,” it also captured the emotional core of the story.
Just like in the novel, Karloff’s Frankenstein’s monster is oddly sympathetic. Karloff could’ve just wandered around groaning with his arms out, but he brought real depth to this character. Whale includes quieter dramatic scenes like the monster befriending the little girl Maria to show that this monster has a heart. Karloff excels in making the monster a character that audiences can root for as the frenzied mob screams for his blood at the movie's conclusion.
7 Sigourney Weaver As Ellen Ripley In Alien
According to the documentary The Beast Within: The Making of Alien, the script for Ridley Scott’s Alien included a note for the casting team: “The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women.” The decision to cast a woman as Ripley ended up breaking new ground for female action heroes.
Sigourney Weaver’s fierce portrayal of Ellen Ripley, the last surviving member of the Nostromo crew, proved that women could lead action movies and hold their own against terrifying extraterrestrial creatures. She was nominated for an Oscar for James Cameron’s perfect sequel Aliens, but she should’ve gotten a nomination for the original, too.
6 Robert Mitchum As Reverend Harry Powell In The Night Of The Hunter
Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter is one of the tensest thrillers ever made. Robert Mitchum stars as minister-turned-serial killer Harry Powell, who plans to charm a widow and steal the $10,000 in cash that her executed husband stashed away. When it becomes apparent that the man’s children are the only ones who know where the money is, Harry goes after them, too.
Mitchum’s calm, collected, but decidedly formidable turn as Powell makes this movie an unnerving delight. The scene where Powell confronts Lillian Gish's elderly Rachel Cooper ranks as one of the tensest moments in horror movie history. Mitchum would later give another memorably sinister performance as Max Cady in 1962's Cape Fear, which was remade in 1991 with Robert De Niro earning an Academy Award nomination for the same role.
5 Lupita Nyong’o As Adelaide Wilson / Red In Us
Jordan Peele managed to land an Oscar nomination for the star of his unforgettable directorial debut Get Out, Daniel Kaluuya, but the star of his sophomore feature Us, Lupita Nyong’o, was snubbed. She was deservingly recognized by the N.Y. Film Critics, but not the Academy. And Nyong’o gave twice the performance as usual, playing both Adelaide Wilson and her “Tethered” counterpart, Red.
As a mother desperately trying to protect her family from the apocalypse she knew was coming, Nyong’o is endlessly captivating. And in her second role as a red pajama-wearing revolutionary launching an all-out war against surface-dwelling humans, she’s endlessly terrifying. She inhabits these dual characters expertly, convincing as both the maternal protagonist and the creepy antagonist, effectively carrying the whole movie.
4 Jack Nicholson As Jack Torrance In The Shining
The main difference between the book and movie versions of The Shining is the reason Jack Torrance loses his mind. In Stephen King’s novel, Jack is a good man who’s driven to evil by the ghosts in the Overlook Hotel.
In Stanley Kubrick’s movie adaptation of The Shining, Jack Nicholson plays the character as a husband and father at the end of his tether, who’s already seething with anger and ready to murder his family before the isolation of the hotel pushes him over the edge, which is much more terrifying.
3 Toni Collette As Annie Graham In Hereditary
Much like Ari Aster’s follow-up movie Midsommar, Hereditary would work just fine as a domestic drama without the horror elements. Despite the presence of a pagan cult looking for a human form to bring their demon-king to Earth, Hereditary is a story about a family being torn apart by grief.
Toni Collette seemed like a shoo-in for a Best Actress nomination for her stunning performance as a grieving mother. Scenes like the group grief counseling session and the explosive family dinner wouldn’t have felt out of place in a Best Actress highlights reel at the Oscars. And yet, when the nominations were announced, Collette was left empty-handed.
2 Anthony Perkins As Norman Bates In Psycho
While Janet Leigh was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (spoiling the big twist) and Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director for Psycho, Anthony Perkins received no love from the Academy for his haunting portrayal of Norman Bates. There are plenty of iconic villains in the Hitchcock canon, but Perkins’ unsuspecting mama’s boy-turned-killer tops them all.
Perkins plays Norman as superficially sweet and innocent in his early scenes with Marion, so that the twist revealing his true nature has maximum impact. The power and complexity of Perkins' performance are only fully appreciated when it's revealed that Norman has been impersonating his dead mother throughout the entire movie.
1 Mia Farrow As Rosemary Woodhouse In Rosemary’s Baby
Ruth Gordon won Best Supporting Actress for her turn as Minnie Castevet in Rosemary’s Baby, but the film’s incredible star Mia Farrow didn’t even get a nomination. As the unsuspecting mother-to-be who gradually comes to realize she's carrying the Antichrist, Farrow gives a performance for the ages.
Throughout the movie, a pregnant Rosemary becomes fearful that her husband and neighbors are Satanists conspiring against her. Since director Roman Polanski holds off on revealing any hard evidence to support Rosemary’s theories until the haunting final scene, the movie’s study of paranoia rests entirely on Farrow’s powerful performance.
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