In an unlikely occurrence, Guillermo del Toro‘s horror love story ‘The Shape of Water’ wound up being the top nominated movie for this year’s Academy Awards. The horror genre is generally considered the black sheep of the motion picture medium. The only quasi-horror movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture was 1991’s ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, directed by the late Jonathan Demme. A few other films that can be classified as horror have gotten nominations but failed to take the prize. These include Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’ in 1941 and ‘Spellbound’ in 1945, George Cukor’s ‘Gaslight’ in 1944, William Friedkin’s ‘The Exorcist’ in 1973 and M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 classic ‘The Sixth Sense’.
‘The Shape of Water’ is up for 13 awards this year, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress for Sally Hawkins, Best Supporting Actress for Octavia Spencer, Best Supporting Actor for Richard Jenkins and Best Original Screenplay for del Toro and Vanessa Taylor.
“This is the year in which the genre takes its place on the stage without being backed by a bestselling book or a literary classic. Normally when the fantastic is at this stage of the conversion, it is backed up by one of these things. I think it’s beautiful that this has happened.
The Academy Awards will be handed out on March 4 on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel will host the ceremony.