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It is said in Sinners that music has the power to connect the past with the present. That might be so, but when it’s good enough it appears also able to shape the future. Such is the case for Ryan Coogler’s musical-vampire-gangster-hybrid movie which made Oscar history Thursday morning when it became the most nominated film in the Academy Awards’ 98-year history.
Coming in with an astonishing 16 nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Sinners broke a record previously shared by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016), all of which earned 14 nominations in their given year. And two of which, we might add, went on to win Best Picture after all three picked up Best Director.
It’s a staggering haul that would seem to rewrite what we expect from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has traditionally been recalcitrant about recognizing scary movies, or anything with the scent of horror, with major above-the-line awards. Before this morning, in fact, there had only been seven horror movies nominated for Best Picture, and only a single winner in the bunch, 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.
This morning that distinction rose by two, however, because in addition to Sinners receiving 16 nominations, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein hardly went overlooked. The dream project for the genre maestro earned an impressive nine nominations across numerous categories. These included a lot of technical areas, such as Best Costume Design, Production Design, and Cinematography, but it also included Best Adapted Screenplay and an incredibly well-deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination for Jacob Elordi.
Still, it is Sinners’ stunning performance that turned heads, especially with relatively unexpected nominations for the film in the Best Supporting Actor category, courtesy of a sweltering Delroy Lindo performance, and Best Supporting Actress thanks to Wunmi Mosaku’s haunting work. It should also be noted Lindo is an actor the Academy has long snubbed, including just five years ago for Da 5 Bloods. The belated recognition of his talent is overdue and further evidence of just what acultural powerhouse this film has been. Already the highest-grossing film in the domestic box office of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture—Sinners earned $280 million in the U.S., albeit with the asterisk that its $368 million total is dwarfed internationally by fellow BP nominee F1, which grossed $632 million worldwide—Coogler’s vampiric meditation on the roots of Black culture in the Jim Crow South has proved equally spellbinding for Academy voters that showered it with nominations in Best Cinematography, Production Design, Sound, and even Best Original Song, courtesy of “I Lied to You.”
All of which raises the question of whether the Academy’s well-documented aversion toward horror is fading. At a glance, one might be tempted to say that Sinners could be an outlier, a cultural and commercial juggernaut so well-done that it becomes the exception that proves the rule—a feat Coogler is personally familiar with since he remains the only superhero movie director to earn a Best Picture nomination to date thanks to Black Panther—but we’d point out that, again, Frankenstein also overperformed. Furthermore, Amy Madigan earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Weapons, which is all the more remarkable when you realize Ariana Grande, who seemed like a sure-thing six months ago (back before folks had seen Wicked: For Good), was snubbed.
Cumulatively it seems to suggest that as the Academy’s tastes have diversified and broadened in the last decade, prejudices against genre have faded away. It was only a few years ago, after all, that the genre-bending Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture.
Still, we’d suggest perhaps taking a pinch of salt with any giddiness about the AMPAS embracing horror this morning. While there were a number of great movies in 2025—and we haven’t even had enough time to note until now One Battle After Another’s impressive 13 nominations or Sentimental Value absolutely slaying with four acting nominations, and deserving every one of them!—it was on the whole a somewhat subdued year for critical darlings that penetrated pop culture. And in a generally weaker field, the Academy voters perhaps have better incentive to turn to where artistic and commercial success blended into movies people actually saw. Movies like Sinners and Weapons.
Plus it bears reminding that nominations do not mean automatic wins. Consider, for example how just last year Demi Moore looked like the definite frontrunner for Best Actress due to career-best work in The Substance, yet Moore lost came Oscar night, perhaps due to, as several anonymous Oscar voters admitted in the press, many refused to actually watch the horror movie. Also while The Substance was nominated, another great vampire movie just last year went snubbed in everything save Best Cinematography, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu.
One morning does not mark a trend. But at the very least, it does suggest a willingness to accept that in some years, a great horror movie with something to say—particularly about the role of race, love, and yes, horror, in the experience of American life—should not be denied. More than 50 years after The Exorcist lost Best Picture to The Sting, history might judge one as more culturally and cinematically significant than the other. And Sinners has already made such a splash, Academy voters would be wise not to preemptively ignore its musical beck and call.
The 98th annual Academy Awards air Sunday, March 15.
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