The Oscar nominations for 2025 show an emerging trend in Hollywood: that along with animated films, horror films have become one of the few kind of films that audience will actually go to a theater to see. While other genres of films have struggled to find an audience (mainstream comedies almost always are sequels or remakes now, with original ideas few and far between), and even superhero movies finally seeming to make less and less.horror has endured. And since horror films tend to have relatively low budgets and can spawn franchises, they are some of the most profitable films being made these days. Therefore it makes sense that the Academy wants to be seen as rewarding filmmakers who make successful films, so it is no surprise that Ryan Coogler's very entertaining and very popular, period piece vampire film Sinners leads the nominations with a whopping 16, the highest ever for one film in Oscar history. Meanwhile, another horror film, Guillermo del Toro's recent adaptation of Frankenstein, got 9 nominations. That said, I was disappointed that Zach Cregger's excellent horror film Weapons, a film that I actually enjoyed more than Sinners, only got one nomination, Best Supporting Actress, for Amy Madigan's wonderfully creepy performance. But still, considering that horror films rarely even got nominations in the past, the trend to horror shows the Academy following the tastes of the public.
Other than Sinners breaking a record for nominations, there were no big surprises in the nominees, with PT Anderson's great One Battle After Another coming in after Sinners with 13 nominations, and I think it may have a better chance at winning Best Picture than Sinners, given that its harsh look at immigration crackdowns in America means that rewarding it would be a big middle finger raised at the Trump administration from progressive Hollywood. (Remember how giving Sean Penn the Best Actor award back in 2008, while well deserved, also counted as a criticism of the homophobic Bush administration).
I was also happy to see that many of the nominations were for lower budget foreign and independent films since the best thing that the Oscars can still do in a time of dwindling box office returns is to bring attention to films that many audiences have never heard of. So I was glad to see that Chloe Zhao's Hamnet, Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent and Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value all got multiple nominations.
On the other hand, the nominees for Best Picture show why the number of nominees was increased back in 2009 from 5 movies to 10; to add more mainstream films. So, nestled in between the worthy nominees was the box office hit F1, a film that I despised. But if calling it one of the 10 best movies of the year is a way to get more people to watch the broadcast, than so be it. I just hope it doesn't win.
