How Black Horror is leading the contemporary horror movement.
Uma Mody, Staff Writer
Photo source: New York Times
It’s awards season, and the recent Academy Award nominations have marked history with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025) topping the lists and beating records as the most nominated film in Oscar history. A groundbreaking accomplishment, the horror film received 16 nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Cinematography—among many others. Additionally, Sinners joins Judas the Black Messiah (2021) as a record number of 10 Black individual artists nominated for a single film.
This is important, considering the Academy Awards history of being #OscarsSoWhite, which has been a viral movement addressing the lack of diversity in Hollywood and the Academy, regarding nominations as well as industry spaces. Since the Awards started in 1929, only 6% of nominees have been people of colour, and an even smaller 2% have been women of colour.
Sinners is also one of eight horror films to be nominated for Best Picture—with the first only being 1973’s The Exorcist—as the genre has been historically snubbed at the awards. An evident bias stemming from even Hitchcock’s golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, Hollywood has seen the genre as lowbrow and substandard, due to stigmatized and—obviously—disturbing themes, as well as its graphic visuals.
Sinners breaking Academy records thus marks the death of horror stigma in Hollywood, in a time where the Black horror subgenre has trailblazed and transcended storytelling of the terror.
Stories of the undead have been in the Western entertainment industries for decades; however, origins of figures like the Zombie have roots in Haitian folklore originating from West African cultures. Some reports shared that the afterlife of the undead represented the bonds of slavery. Such original depictions of zombies were not necessarily violent, but rather spirits; once entering Hollywood through stories like George Romero’s cult classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) they were portrayed as evil cannibals.
Although frightening, horror stories and themes have captivated audiences for decades. The genre has expanded to various subgenres such as slasher, supernatural, and psychological films, as well as genre-bending horror films which may combine into horror comedy, and more recently re-popular, Black horror films.
With directors such as Jordan Peele and now Ryan Coogler emerging with their creative and inventive horror storytelling, the 2010s and 2020s have produced blockbuster films like Get Out (2017), Nope (2022), and now Sinners, thus signifying a rebirth to the subgenre that had been developed in the 1970s-1990s through blaxploitation films with one of the first being Blacula (1972). Black horror has led the shift of the public’s interest into horror in recent years with Get Out reaching a gross of over $255 million worldwide, and Sinners exceeding $300 million on an already large nearly $100 million budget. Not only has this subgenre been popular and enjoyable for movie watchers, but they have also encouraged people to enjoy horror collectively in theatres, which are now wavering in popularity due to streaming culture.
What makes Black horror capable of captivating audiences to the point of commercial recognition in the box office, and—finally—institutional recognition such as at the Academy Awards? Sinners and Get Out have accomplished this feat, with the latter gaining four Oscar nominations, winning for Best Original Screenplay. The answer to this phenomena turns to understanding what the horror genre seeks to emancipate as a whole: addressing social issues in narrative forms. Horror has served as a genre capable of having audiences sit–and frankly, pay—to sit in discomfort while witnessing the ugly truths of reality. For example, Get Out creatively worked with the zombie trope to discuss racism and liberal ignorance. Sinners, a vampire horror film, shared themes on racial oppression, cultural exploitation, and identity.
This way, horror films serve as genre-bending, engaging in social commentary that effectively captivates audiences and keeps an open discussion on relevant issues. Additionally, considering the chaotic state of the world where everyday we face horrific headlines, fear has become a daily sentiment—thus, horror films might start to feel less abstract from our lives, and more relevant, embedded with relatable symbolism and meanings. Perhaps the escape of the theatre from daily life has shifted in the horror genre, where we now might seek our own forms of political protest and engagement, in supporting stories centering race, identity, and culture, in a world where once progressive institutions are now backtracking on inclusivity and diversity efforts.
This brings me to my next point: recognition at this year’s Academy Awards asks the question, does it matter for Black cinema and art to be praised by an already race-biased institution? In one sense, the arts are valued and critically acclaimed in historically white spaces of privilege, and therefore, to dominate in such a space is to almost make a statement in itself—that Black art transcends, stories of immigrants and minorities are to be told—for the mainstream. In another sense, indifference to such institutions can be a form of resistance, an acknowledgement of the ongoing biases of the mainstream, and perhaps even a chance to uplift marginal, race-focused institutions like the NAACP Image Awards.
The main concern in asking this question is to consider the reality where Sinners does not win many awards amidst being nominated for a whopping sixteen. Not only is that a slap-in-the-face to the Sinners team, but to anyone who for a second considered the Academy to put aside biases and believe in the film as worthy of winning. After all, how can a film be nominated so much but receive so little? To exceed nomination expectations but come short of actual awards may seem as if the Academy is performative in appreciating Black arts. It could be a form of tokenism, in showing symbolic recognition without necessarily praising with a substantive reward. This way, the Academy is aware of its position regarding #OscarsSoWhite, and are optics-driven in having Sinners break nomination records.
On a final note, I’ve seen all the Best Picture nominations for this year’s awards, and I truly believe Sinners was the best film to come out of 2025. An original story, captivating audiences with its genre-blend of Black horror and thriller, infused with symbolic meaning tying music, race, and culture—it’s the definition of a Best Picture.
It will be fascinating to see how appreciated Sinners will be regarding their sixteen chances at winning an Oscar. Will the Academy be able to move beyond simply recognizing Sinners and Black horror cinema, and begin truly celebrating the stories the genre shares—leading a broader renaissance of horror cinema as a whole?
