It all started with fangs on the red carpet. Sinners actor Jack O’Connell walked down the short distance to the inside of the Dolby Theater for the 98th Academy Awards ceremony sporting bloodstained fangs. It felt like a sign of things to come. And now that the results are in, we can officially celebrate what ended up being one of biggest nights for horror at the Oscars, in history.
Sinners, Frankenstein, Weapons, and K-Pop Demon Hunters all took golden statues home with them. It was a historic night. Sinners took some of the biggest prizes in the group, with Michael B. Jordan taking the best actor win and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw making history as the first woman to win in her category. Ryan Coogler took best original screenplay and Ludwig Göransson picked up best original score.
The Delroy Lindo lost his best supporting actor bid to Sean Penn for One Battle After Another. People were hoping for a miracle here, but it was a longshot anyway. That said, the wins that Sinners did get landed with a force. They each felt like a puzzle piece that when put together made up the image of this year’s best picture. Instead, that award went to One Battle After Another, with Paul Thomas Anderson also taking home the best director award over Coogler.
Despite losing the night’s biggest prize, Sinners’s wins amounted to a resounding statement on horror’s ability to compete with the heavy hitters at the awards show. It should mark the beginning of a new era for the genre.
The other movies in the list further justify horror’s growing presence in the field. Amy Madigan took the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, an important win as it belongs to what many consider a straight-up horror movie.
A lot of people came out to argue that Sinners was more of an elevated kind of horror movie, as if it could only win because it’s also an exploration of a culture and its music. It’s an argument that puts a condition on genre films to able to compete. It’s a nearsighted take, but it’s also one that Madigan’s win complete obliterates.
Madigan’s Aunt Gladys is already a horror icon, a fact made more than obvious by host Conan O’Brian as he opened the show with a pre-recorded segment of him running away from a bunch of kids across all the nominated movies sporting the wig and makeup combo that made the character so memorable. It’s a “kicking the door open” type of win. We should expect more Gladys-like roles popping up in the near future after this.
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein raked in a lot of the technical Oscars, as was expected. Production design, costume design, and hair and makeup all went to the latest Mary Shelley adaptation. These are the wins that horror fans have been used to for years now. Technical awards were the ceiling. It was only the “serious” horror movies (the ones people would argue were dramas first, scary second) that would filter through. Movies like The Exorcist and Silence of the Lambs among them.
In the context of the latest awards showing, Frankenstein’s wins serve to remind audiences and critics alike that horror can dominate as a whole across categories. These types of prizes stack up, and they signal a potential changing of the guard.
Last but not least, K-Pop Demon Hunters. This animated movie took the world by storm, both as an exploration of Korean culture and as a celebration of K-Pop music. It came as no surprise that it won both best animated feature and best song for “Golden.” This was yet another historic win as “Golden” became the first K-Pop song to win an Oscar.
Demon Hunters dominated on the awards circuit. This was simply its year. In terms of reach and relevance, it shares in the same spotlight as Sinners. Both films were praised for their focus on culture, their dedication to getting it right. These are the types of movies that will continue to be discussed well after all the awards have been handed out. It’s the real marker of greatness in filmmaking.
It looks like Jack O’Connell’s fangs really were a good luck charm. Horror left the show with 10 statues total, combined. There were 24 awards handed out in the televised event. This means that around 42% of the golden statues went to films in the horror genre, and in some of the industry’s most coveted categories. Is this enough to declare a turning point? Perhaps. Consistency is name of the game going forward. While we wait for next year’s awards season, though, let us at least enjoy the fact that the 2026 Oscars ceremony was a glorious night of horror.
