Given how common films like Barbie and Depraved went on to not win any of the above-the-line awards of their respective years, it’s in all probability giving followers of Sinners’ mournful guitar riffs another reason to sing the blues. However the excellent news is that, in contrast to Barbie and Depraved, Sinners remains to be perceived within the business as a severe Finest Image contender. And in the case of predicting that race (nd many others), the Globes are traditionally unreliable.
For proof please contemplate that within the final 10 years, the Globes and Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences’ tastes for “finest image” have aligned solely 4 out of 10 occasions. Regardless of the Globes primarily having two Finest Image winners (which doubles their probabilities of “predicting” the Oscars accurately), much more usually we wind up with years like 2022 the place The Energy of the Canine was awarded Finest Drama and West Facet Story given Finest Musical or Comedy (which is a uncommon good use of that class’s title), however the Oscars went on to shockingly choose CODA for Finest Image. Equally within the final 12 months earlier than the pandemic, the Globes appeared to slim the race right down to 1917 (Drama) and As soon as Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Comedy), however missed the boat completely on Parasite.
Admittedly a lot of these years occurred throughout the Hollywood International Press Affiliation’s infamously checkered historical past because the arbiters of who receives a golden earth bauble, however even because the group was reformed because the Golden Globes Basis in 2023—and to be clear their nomination decisions have been way more spectacular because the pivot—they nonetheless chosen The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez as the most effective movies of 2024, and gave the long run Oscar darling Anora precisely zero Globes regardless of 5 nominations.
All of which is to say that the Globes are a tenuous bellwether for predicting Oscars, and it appears unlikely that members of the Academy will let the Globes’ wins dictate whether or not they vote for Sinners or not in any main class.
With that mentioned, we sadly suspect that Coogler’s fabulous horror film nonetheless has an uphill battle forward of it as a result of it’s a horror film. A wonderful, superbly made horror film. Alas, regardless of Academy membership rising by a whole lot of youthful voices within the final decade, by some means the voting pool of probably the most prestigious Hollywood award stays comparatively allergic to giving high prizes to something deemed too scary or lurid. There’s precisely one (1) exception to this rule in the case of the best prize, with The Silence of the Lambs nabbing a shocking Finest Image win regardless of opening a digital calendar 12 months earlier than the 1992 Academy Awards. Thirty-four years on although, this stays a weird outlier. So far the Finest Image race has seen solely six different horror films nominated: The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), The Sixth Sense (1999), Black Swan (2010), Get Out (2017), and The Substance (2024).
Sinners will completely be nominated for Finest Image as will, we’d hope, Coogler for Director and Jordan for Finest Actor, however the Academy stays frustratingly reticent about giving horror an excessive amount of recognition. Simply final 12 months, The Substance‘s Demi Moore was perceived because the frontrunner for Finest Actress, a prize she picked up at various earlier ceremonies, together with the Critics Alternative Awards, the SAG Awards, and even the Globes (within the as ever random “Musical or Comedy” subsection). However to many’s shock, the additionally deserving Mikey Madison picked up the Oscar for the pleasant Anora—a film that we’d add is definitely a comedy.
