Here’s the proof the Oscars still hate horror

The Academy Awards refuses to honor horror movies and one egregious snub stands out as evidence above all the rest.

The Oscars have only ever nominated six horror movies for Best Picture: The Exorcist, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan and Get Out. This is a bleak list and despite the optimism that Get Out broke a barrier for the genre, the 2020 snubs for Lupita Ngony’o in Us and Florence Pugh in Midsommar seem to have driven home the point that, well, the Academy just hates horror.

Much like sports movies, which the Oscars also historically hate, a large swath of horror movies are legitimately bad movies — the trademark camp and slasher aesthetic is generally at odds with what the Academy, at least, considers to be good. As Michael Wu remarked in Study Breaks this time last year, typically the only way a horror movie gets nominated is if it can trick the Academy by being acceptably categorized as a psychological thriller.

But the last three to five years have seen a growing appreciation for horror whose identity cannot be denied. Get Out primed viewers to view Us outside the genre lens, yet Us is, in every way and by Jordan Peele’s explicit intention, a horror movie. Midsommar, Ari Aster’s follow up to the also-snubbed Hereditary, was another clear horror movie that earned broad acclaim. It: Chapter Two, Doctor Sleep and even Ready or Not were all received with a degree of serious consideration by mainstream film critics that still feels unusual.

Which is to say, and as that list should suggest, 2019 was a great year for horror. The Academy’s refusal to get with the program — particularly with respect to the acting categories, particularly given the horror performances of actors and actresses the awards bodies otherwise love — was disheartening. But there was one late 2019 horror release, a movie that entered the season with sky-high levels of award buzz, a genre masterpiece, whose snubs underscore more than anything else the Oscars’ animosity toward horror.

That movie is, of course, Cats.

Cats, the 2019 Tom Hooper adaptation starring Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench, Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, James Corden, Rebel Wilson, Idris Elba and Ian McKellen, has been described (affectionately!) as a “monstrosity.” It is a “descent into madness” and “a nightmare that won’t end.” One review called it “nearly as obscene as The Human Centipede” and The Boston Globe headlined their review simply “Oh God, my eyes.”

Richard Lawson, at Vanity Fair, described Cats as “an existential quandary, [a] 110-minute journey into a computer graphic phantasmagoria, revolting and briefly alluring, a true grotesque that sings, in fits and starts, a faint siren song” and the characters as “digitally altered cat-humanoid ghouls.” Those are words you use to describe a horror movie.

Cats is a real horror show.

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And like some of the most beloved horror movies, Cats is becoming a cult classic on a remarkably accelerated timeline. In little over a month since it premiered, it’s already developed a devoted following, drawn to its deranged energy and unfathomable creative decisions. Fans, if that is even the right word, brag about repeat viewings and offer suggestions for the best perception-altering substances to pair with the feature. Theaters are now running specialty screenings where the (always sold-out) crowds drink cocktails out of saucers (?) and dress in Cats cosplay, carrying props, shout-singing along to the movie.

Cats may not be a good movie, by any acceptable definition, but on the other hand, maybe it’s a great movie. Maybe it’s one of the most visually scary, terrifyingly mesmerizing and simultaneously thrilling disaster epics ever set to celluloid. Imagine if it was Oscar-nominated too!

In December, Universal pulled Cats from the studio’s For Your Consideration materials, so maybe this isn’t solely the Academy’s fault. In any case, everyone involved missed out on the opportunity to make Cats the horror nominee it was always meant to be.