Horror Reigns Supreme At This Year’s Golden Globes
The awards race may never be the same.
The yearly scramble for award recognition rarely feels like anybody’s game, but 2025 is different. This year has been packed with unconventional frontrunners, with the most acclaimed challenging the safe voting habits most may be used to.
This week, the race heats up with Golden Globes nominations — and the line-up is surprisingly genre-friendly. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which takes elements from the historical drama, classic vampire horror, and music revues, garnered seven nominations. Frankenstein, the latest monster movie from Guillermo del Toro, came away with five. Even Weapons scored a nomination for Amy Madigan, whose chilling (and darkly funny) turn as Aunt Gladys instantly inducted her into the horror hall of fame. While One Battle After Another remains a major frontrunner with nine nominations, some of its fiercest competition is coming from an unorthodox genre.
Frankenstein just crept its way into the awards conversation.
Surprising as this shake-up may be, there is a precedent for it. While largely ignored — save for some major exceptions, like The Silence of the Lambs — in the past, genre projects have slowly been gaining more of a foothold in awards conversations. From the late 2010s into the 2020s, voters have grown warmer to monster movies and sci-fi fantasies. It helps that so many of the films in those categories demonstrate an undeniable level of craft: del Toro, who won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for The Shape of Water in 2018, is just one of many filmmakers whose work has shifted the stigma against left-of-center storytelling.
This year’s Golden Globe nominees also owe something to Everything Everywhere All At Once, which took home Best Picture at the 2023 Academy Awards. While not the first “out there” project to win or even score a nomination at the Oscars, its victory signaled a major shift. Awards voters are more open to genre films than any iteration of the voting body we’ve ever seen. It’s why The Substance — one of the strangest, most stylish horror movies of the decade — had such strong awards chances beyond its use as a comeback vehicle for lead actress Demi Moore. Weapons might even follow in that film’s footsteps, at least where Madigan’s Supporting Actress campaign is concerned.
Madigan is slowly but surely becoming a frontrunner for her work in Weapons.
As this year’s awards season begins in earnest, it really does feel like anybody’s game. The race for Best Picture is mostly a competition between Sinners and One Battle; as these two films are competing in different categories at the Golden Globes, they could each score a victory, which will only make the competition stiffer down the line. Accolades within the acting categories also feature some surprises for Frankenstein, which bodes well for Oscar nominations. All in all, it’s a good time to be a horror fan: even if our faves don’t take away gold, all this recognition feels like a win in itself.
