At the 98th annual Academy Awards on Mar. 15, the horror thriller Sinners will make history as the first film to secure 16 Oscar nominations. Given the movie’s combination of critical and cultural acclaim, it is a fitting record, one that is made all the more laudable by the fact that the Academy has historically neglected the horror movie genre. This trend has shifted in recent cycles, and rightfully so, as the genre has produced some of the best original filmmaking of the past several years.

Sinners, which was released in April 2025, is a horror thriller, directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan as identical twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore, Miles Caton as Sammie “Preacherboy” Moore and Hailee Steinfeld as Mary. The film follows Jordan’s characters, known as the Smokestack twins, as they return to their hometown on the Mississippi Delta in 1932 and start a juke joint. Over the course of one day, the twins, accompanied by Sammie and an ensemble of characters, prepare the juke joint for a grand opening that night.

At the opening, they clash with a group of supernatural vampires who promise a world of immortality, complete equality and everlasting love. The vampires begin picking off the joint’s patrons one by one before a final showdown leaves only Smoke and Sammie alive. Smoke, who discovers from the vampires that a group of Ku Klux Klan members planned on razing the juke joint in the morning, stockpiles weapons and ambushes the men, killing them before dying himself. Sammie returns to his father’s church, where he defies his father’s order to leave behind music, which he believes is a life of sin, and embrace the Christian god. Coogler uses the horror-thriller medium to explore themes of generational trauma, racialized exploitation and the role of religion and music in Black southern culture.

Sinners was met with widespread critical and popular acclaim, grossing almost $400 million box office globally and receiving a bevy of awards nominations and wins, including at the BAFTAs, Critic’s Choice Awards, NAACP Awards, Actor Awards (formerly known as the SAG Awards), and Golden Globes, according to IMDb Pro’s Box Office Mojo. It also received sixteen Academy Award nominations, the most in Oscars history. This record is notable considering that Oscars are infamous for overlooking horror movies; only seven films from the genre had previously been nominated for Best Picture, not including Sinners (which received a nod in the category this year) and only one, Silence of the Lambs (1991) has ever won.

Acting nominations for leads in horror films have also been scarce, with some notable recent snubs being Toni Collete for Hereditary (2018), Lupita Nyong’o for Us (2019) and Mia Goth for Pearl (2022). Sinners received three acting nominations, with Jordan nominated for Best Actor, Delroy Lindo nominated for Best Supporting Actor (for his role as Delta Slim) and Wunmi Mosaku nominated for Best Supporting Actress (for her role as Annie).

So, is the academy warming up to the horror genre? Recent evidence suggests: maybe. Last year’s Academy Awards saw body horror film The Substance receive five nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress (Demi Moore). The success of Sinners this year could represent a marked shift in how the academy treats the genre. If so, it is a good thing. In an age where movie theaters are overrun by sequels, remakes and big-budget franchises, original filmmaking is sorely lacking from the mainstream. Over the past decade, some of the most innovative, creative films have been critically-acclaimed and commercially-successful horror movies, including Get Out (2017), Us (2017), Midsommar (2019), Nope (2022), The Substance (2024), Weapons (2025) and of course Sinners (2025). If Sinners breaking out means more recognition for the horror genre at the Oscars, it will be well-deserved.