If there’s one thing the Oscars are good for, it is this: giving an award to actors and actresses who reach the absolute peak of their craft in looking extremely distressed, and screaming a lot. After a long and distinguished career in being inoffensively handsome and passably good at acting, Leo DiCaprio finally got the recognition he deserved in 2016 for screaming and having a great deal of snot in his beard for The Revenant. “This is good,” we all said. “Our beautiful screaming snot beard boy finally has his prize.”
This is all window dressing to the fury deep in the pit of my soul I absolutely must express through posting on this website: hometown hero Toni Collette was robbed.
Hereditary receiving precisely zero Oscar noms is a travesty in and of itself, given it was one of last year’s best movies. But the best part of Hereditary was Toni Collette’s frenzied performance, which automatically catapulted itself into the upper echelons of all-time horror performances.
Yes, the Oscars have never really been amenable to horror movies generally. It’s rare for them to land nominations at all, and the wildly critically-acclaimed Get Out scraping through Best Screenplay last year was a very nice surprise.
But c’mon. For this scene alone she should have landed a Best Actress nod, and Alex Wolff should have gotten… I dunno, a lolly or a treat or something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ocTY0EuWbY
Horror is obviously having a big moment right now. Production houses like Blumhouse are absolutely churning them out, and it’s definitely putting bums in seats. And – and this is definitely a first – some of them, like Hereditary, are scoring some arthouse cred in addition to their broad popular appeal. The Academy is just taking its sweet time to catch up on what everyone else has already realised.
Let me say it again: Toni. Collette. Robbed. Our Toni.
