Get Out Oscars

The Oscar nominations were released in January and last year's wonderful Get Out from Jordan Peele is in the mix with four nominations (Best Picture, Actor, Director and Original Screenplay). Horror films don't have a great track record at the Academy Awards- with notable exceptions like Silence of the Lambs and The Exorcist.

While it's amazing to see Daniel Kaluuya and Jordan Peele getting deserved acknowledgement for their work I can't see them winning over safer options like Gary Oldman or Daniel Day Lewis. Last month the band Code Orange were nominated for the Best Metal Performance Grammy but lost out to Mastodon and I think this sums up the issue with awards and why Get Out won't win.

Mastodon are an established metal band and Code Orange are a hardcore band at an earlier stage of their career. Had Code Orange won the award then it would have shone a light onto alternative/underground music, but when given the choice between two deserving options- Mastodon did deserve to win awards for Emperor of Sand (it's a beautiful album)- awards like the Grammys or Oscars will go to the safer option...my guess would be Dunkirk.

Get Out is an exceptional film and highlights what can be achieved in the horror genre- much in the way The Exorcist is more than just a horror film. If Get Out won Best Picture then it would be putting an often overlooked genre in the spotlight. We have had films like Darkest Hour and Dunkirk before, but awarding a film like Get Out (or Ladybird) Best Picture would be awarding it to a film which we haven't seen before.

I'm not saying that if Dunkirk won, it wouldn't be a deserving winner. Mastodon deserved to win a Grammy, but wouldn't it be better to give an award like Best Picture to someone like Jordan Peele for such an assured directorial debut in a genre so frequently disregarded.