2019 was an exceptional year for cinema, especially in the horror space, especially in the "horror performances good enough to get nominated for Oscars" space. Two years previously, Get Out's excellent slate of Oscar nominations (and screenplay win!) had me excited that we'd see similar horror love in the 2019 nominations. And while that year's Best Picture winner was, among many other genres, kind of a "horror film", none of the incredible horror performances we saw got any of the Oscar love they deserved.

Should I have been surprised, or even hopeful to begin with? Probably not. With the exception of some outliers, like The Silence of the Lambsthe horror genre has largely been passed over by those prestigious voters of the Academy. The genre, with its abject depictions of violence, mayhem, and generally "lowbrow" forms of cinematic communication, just must not be considered cultured enough for such sparkly awards — despite the fact that horror has always, and will always, be directly in dialogue with social mores, public interest, and incredible craftspeople in a way many of these prestige dramas could only dream of.

In honor of this blessed genre, and the wonderful craftspeople who deliver sterling work in it, here are 25 of the best horror performances that should've been nominated for an Oscar — and you better believe we gotta know which ones we missed. For more on all things horror, here's our review of a bonkers Stephen King blu-ray set (not including, weirdly, the one that Kathy Bates won an Oscar for!).

Isabelle Adjani, 'Possession'

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Image via Gaumont

In Andrzej Żuławski's cult horror psychodrama classic Possession, Isabelle Adjani takes us on a tour-de-force of emotional limits — in two different roles. When international Sam Neill returns home to his wife, Adjani, he's surprised to find she wants a divorce. That is only the tip of the iceberg of miseries headed toward, and because of, both performers, with Adjani acting increasingly erratic, threatening, terrified, obsessed, callously uncaring, and yes, possessed. Her performance shades blend and multiply in increasingly fluid, ceaselessly unpredictable ways. While the film does get into literal demons (and Adjani does some very curious things with said demons), the ones that leave the biggest psychological scars on the viewer are the uncannily "human" demons Adjani communicates in this once-in-a-lifetime performance. The film, released in a chopped up version in the U.S., was not a critical nor commercial success, though later viewings find, obviously, what a startling turn Adjani takes.

Christian Bale, 'American Psycho'

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Image via Lionsgate

How do you play a man who, by his own opening admission, has no actual identity? By making the superficial skinsuit as chaotically attractive as possible, allowing the rotting interior cracks to poke through as needed. Christian Bale takes Patrick Bateman, the iconic antihero at the center of American Psycho, and it turns it into a ruthless, and ruthlessly entertaining, sharpened satire on an entire generation's egotistical lack of values or conscience. Bale is relentlessly funny in this picture, able to crack us up with the broad physical performance of that iconic Huey Lewis scene before turning it on a dime with his status-jealousy-motivated murder. It's a constant push and pull between shiny surfaces and pitch black core. I'm not sure what's scarier — Bale's performance when he admits his crimes, or Bale's realization that no one around him cares.

Emily Blunt, 'A Quiet Place'

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Image via Paramount Pictures

Feeling both classically attuned in its hearkening to silent cinema and viscerally contemporary in its command of emotional desperation, Emily Blunt's work in A Quiet Place is simply powerful. As the matriarch of a family (including real-life husband John Krasinski) who must survive a horrific slate of post-apocalyptic monsters who are attracted to sound, while somehow keeping a semblance of a life worth living, Blunt is asked to do a ton. From strong-but-cracking physical resolve, to emotional terror, to protecting those she cares for while reacting to her own traumas, Blunt pulls all of these modes off with front-flips. She is the star of the picture, the audience's obvious central figure to follow, the beating heart, soul, and brawns of A Quiet Place.

Toni Collette, 'Hereditary'

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Image via A24

Sometimes when I'm watching a particularly juicy film performance, I'll clock in my brain what scene they might choose for their eventual Oscar nomination. With HereditaryToni Collette simply has too many to choose from — and still no nomination to speak of! Even before Ari Aster's screenplay lurches into its inevitable, cynical genre conclusions, Collette is given tons of psychologically damaging traumas to react to, whether by screaming in rage and terror, gritting through teeth at the primal frustrations of her family's sins, or pushing the idea of "naturalistic performances in close-ups" past the limit, revealing their inherent limitations. Hell, even when Collette has to give herself over to the screenplay's genre machinations, she does them terrifyingly. What a maelstrom!

Essie Davis, 'The Babadook'

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Image via IFC Films

The Babadook is the last horror film I saw in theaters that messed with my ability to sleep; a true rave review. I attribute its power less to its obviously ingenious production and creature design, and more to the raw punch of Essie Davis' performance. As a poor mother dealing with an increasingly traumatized child who may have uncovered a storybook monster, Davis tears up the fingernails of what motherhood on film typically looks like, revealing the bloody mush of frustrations and anger that lies beneath. Watching her attempt to tread water despite her surrounding horrors is beyond empathetic; watching her, possessed, submerge into the deep end and scream hurtful words of rage at her son is a piece of flawless horror acting that scarred my brain for some time to come.

Mia Farrow, 'Rosemary’s Baby'

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Image via Paramount Pictures

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you." Mia Farrow inhabits this Joseph Heller quote perfectly and wholly in Rosemary's Baby, the story of a pregnant woman and the people she suspects wants the child (who, um, may or may not be the spawn of Satan) for their own nefarious purposes. Farrow suffers, and suffers a lot throughout the classic '60s horror film. She is routinely gaslit, ignored, thought of as a vessel for other's intentions without having intentions of her own, and eventually betrayed by the people she's closest. Farrow orients us throughout this traumatic journey with broadly open eyes and even more open emotional rawness. She strikes nerve after nerve in this film, without any sense of self-protection or ego. A shockingly unvarnished, continuously virtuoistic performance.

Betty Gabriel, 'Get Out'

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Image via Universal Pictures

Betty Gabriel does not inhabit a ton of screen time in Jordan Peele's seminal Get Out, but she makes every second more than count, telling the tragic story of Georgina, who currently works as Allison Williams' family's housekeeper, from beginning to end. Gabriel wears her "Georgina suit" stiffly at first, plastering on a smile we're expected to believe is genuine, despite the lurking glitches at the corners of her physicality. This gulf, this fissure comes to a head in a simply devastating moment, lensed in an distorted close-up, where Gabriel uses the word "No" over and over again in response to a direct accusation from Daniel Kaluuya (Oscar nominee for his role), despite the pouring tears down her cheek, seemingly uncontrolled, telling a completely different story. It is a heartbreakingly iconic moment of the picture, and gives her final moments onscreen a particularly gut-punching moment of regret, as opposed to pure catharsis. Gabriel needed a Best Supporting Actress nomination for this role, no matter how many times she insists "No."

John Goodman, '10 Cloverfield Lane'

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Image via Paramount Pictures

Fierce, terrifying, surprisingly nuanced, and even vulnerable. When John Goodman is on screen in 10 Cloverfield Lane, you cannot and will not tear your eyes away. As a man insistent that the world has been invaded by vicious aliens, holding Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher Jr. captive in an underground bunker, thinking he's they're savior despite his increasingly erratic, controlling, emotionally disturbed behavior, Goodman never overplays a single note. He knows that true fear doesn't come from a man trying to performatively exhibit fear (though when he does activate the character's more traditionally "monstrous" tendencies, look out); true fear comes from a man so insistent in his radically wrong beliefs, that he'll sociopathically eradicate anyone in his path who dares fight back against the truth. The final moments of the film, which will never not shock, only add to the depth and empathy of this beautifully terrifying performance, an all-timer for Goodman.

Duane Jones, 'Night of the Living Dead'

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Image via Continental Distributing

In 1968, George A. Romero changed the horror world forever with his genre-defining Night of the Living Dead. And he centered his zombie masterpiece around Duane Jones, a stage actor with little film credits to his name. This risk paid off and thensome; Jones' work as our chief protagonist Ben, who stays calm and fiercely level-headed as the social fabrics of society fall apart around him in real time. The symbol of Jones' casting on a societal level is worth noting; while Romero himself insists Jones was chosen simply because of his acting talent, it's not hard to read decisive social commentary in viewing a Black hero who's head-and-shoulders smarter than his white compatriots, is in fact allowed to talk back to and hit to his white compatriots, and is still viciously punished by a white government for his troubles — all in the tumultuous year of 1968. Beyond the representative ramifications of Jones' performance, it remains a self-contained purposeful piece of screen acting, rapt with naturalism and clear-headed drive, even as Jones must reckon with the cynical ending barreling its way toward him.

Ashley Judd, 'Bug'

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Image via Lionsgate

Could someone check on Tracy Letts? Beyond playing Lady Bird's lovely Solitaire-playing father, Letts is an accomplished playwright whose works, like Bug, adapted for the screen by William Friedkin, are all kinds of fucked up. And Ashley Judd flings herself directly into the center of the horrific psychodramas of Bug, yielding a fascinating, fearless, and provocative performance. Playing something like "what if Rosemary's Baby was yes-anded by Farrow uptop and then rushed through its plot at 900 miles per hour," Bug stars Judd as a troubled, tortured, abused woman who finds a form of salvation in the form of Michael Shannon. Shannon suffers from paranoia-infused bouts of delusion, believing the most specifically that government-sent bugs are infesting him and his hotel room. And when he brings Judd into his bug-infested room, look out. Judd goes whole hog into the delusion, fighting, clawing, and yearning for any kind of love from this mad man, willing to do just about anything to fight these (invisible to the audience) bugs. The depths of desperation Judd reaches within herself are unsettling in a way that manages to blast through the comforts of "screen acting"; you will fear for Judd, the human, as much as her character.

Barry Keoghan, 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer'

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Image via A24

I've scrutinized this purposefully inscrutable film for Collider before, and I keep coming back to Barry Keoghan as not only the consistent guidepost for the rules of The Killing of a Sacred Deer, but also, strangely, its conscience. The majority of the film's cast, especially Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, speak with no emotion, no humanity, no heart (ironic given that Farrell is a heart surgeon). But whenever Keoghan shows up, he busts out of Yorgos Lanthimos' idiosyncratic mode of speaking. There's guts in his language, in his communication tactics. He feels everything deeply, so much so that he can barely stand still, his moral truths and desire for justice squelching kinetically out of the pores of his body. He demands blood for the blood he has shed, and he will not stop until he is satiated. This desire, this yearning for truly anything pops through the film like a damn balloon. It's a phenomenal, terrifying, beyond-watchable performance.

Plus, like, look at the way this guy eats spaghetti. Oscar level spaghetti eating here.

Matthew Lillard, 'Scream'

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Image via Dimension Films

Um, if you still haven't seen Scream, stop reading. Because the moment Matthew Lillard reveals himself to be one of the malicious forces behind the Ghostface killer is some of the fiercest, wildest, most unhinged, most emotionally desperate screen acting I've ever seen. For the majority of the picture, Lillard's Stu gives us that wild Lillard comic relief we know and love, which makes his turn, his revelation of evil all the more intoxicatingly gut-punching. It's a beautiful piece of self-awareness from Lillard, eager to weaponize his typical screen image into a psychologically, viscerally damaging piece of blunt force. And the damage ain't just to the people around him — Lillard insisting on being injured himself to sell the framing of Neve Campbell's dad is shocking, haunting, and sold without abandon. Lillard is often a dog off the leash; here, his bark and his bite strike equal fear.

Lupita Nyong’o, 'Us'

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Image via Universal Pictures

A travesty, plain and simple. Lupita Nyong'o delivers not one, but two rich, deep, haunted, and haunting performances in Jordan Peele's Us. Her work is, obviously, a technical powerhouse; her Red and Adelaide, despite being tethered doppelgangers to each other, feel like radically different humans, with Nyong'o physically transforming every aspect of her humanity to deliver Red's particular pains. But on an emotional level, Nyong'o has dug deeper than deep, two times over, often with herself as a scene partner. Both characters, even when they're literally fighting and killing for their lives, are reckoning with the traumas evident in every facet of their being (while Red may be the showier performance, I am particularly enthralled by how Adelaide understatedly carries her trauma in her body and voice). Us is an uncommonly rich, sprawling horror film, and Nyong'o gives everything she has and more to the piece. How on earth did the Academy not nominate her?

Anthony Perkins, 'Psycho'

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Image via Paramount Pictures

WIthout Anthony Perkins' leading performance in Psycho, we don't have many of the entries on this list. His Norman Bates is beyond iconic, a genre-definer, a benchmark of psychologically dissecting horror film killers. Sure, the scene in which a doctor stops the movie cold to bluntly state Bates' maladies and motivations is a touch cheesy upon modern eyes, but Perkins' performance itself is rife with casual dread, with ambiguous menace, with Actors' Studio-feeling realism. Perkins catapulted Alfred Hitchcock, and the entire horror film genre, into a bold future by underplaying everything, by keeping his audience on their toes, by never playing the hand of "I'm an evil killer" fully until he needed to. Whether it's Christian Bale taking the ideas of ambiguity and losing one's true self to the extreme, or Matthew Lillard self-reflexively performing in a diametrically oppositional style, everyone is just swimming in Perkins' wake.

Florence Pugh, 'Midsommar'

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Image via A24

Ari Aster strikes again! Florence Pugh is flung through the vacation from Hell in Aster's Midsommar, crafting one of the most relatable leading horror performances I've ever seen. Her Dani is on the cusp of being broken up with by all-time shitty boyfriend Jack Reynor, on the cusp of succumbing to the traumas of her sister's murder-suicide of their family, on the cusp of being swallowed whole by the obviously growing horrors of the Swedish community she and her boyfriend's friends are visiting — and being gaslit about it all along the way. Pugh, with Aster's splendid camerawork often framing her in oppressive closeup, is working with layers upon layers, having to hide Dani's true feelings among her non-understanding peers until they simply cannot be hidden any longer. She makes us pray and beg for any sense of relief, of empowerment, of victory, a testament to Pugh's egoless vulnerability, despite her Dani having to put up shields. And when that sense of empowerment finally comes in the film's final moments... wow. An all-time horror film final shot, all thanks to Pugh.

Linus Roache, 'Mandy'

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Image via RLJE Films

Without a doubt, Nicolas Cage is the heart, soul, and coke-snorting bravado of Mandy, and he deserves all of his praise and thensome. But the performance I keep coming back to in the phantasmagoric cult film belongs to Linus Roache. He is the catalyst of all of the film's horrors, the cult leader obsessed with the beloved title character (Andrea Riseborough, also remarkable), the man who murders her and sets Cage down his path of coke-fueled revenge. But Roache, wisely, doesn't play him like a monster. He plays him like a man who desperately wants to be seen as a monster, to be seen as something beyond the limitations of his mediocre manhood; hell, just to be seen as a good musician would be nice. Jeremiah Sand is a fundamentally pathetic character, and Roache is more than willing to appear pathetic, demoralized even while demoralizing, and disarmingly funny in his pursuit to be taken seriously. He is the hidden gem of a performatively un-hidden movie.

Michael Rooker, 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer'

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Image via Greycat Films

It's one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen, and it's an essential one. Michael Rooker's title role in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is just as influential and important to contemporary horror cinema as Psycho was 26 years before. Rooker strips himself bare and disappears into the role, into the bareness of the film's aesthetics, into the unadorned sociopathy of the mind of a killer. But even when Rooker commits horrific acts on camera, both the film's camera and a character's camera, he imbues Henry with a sense of battling over the fate of his soul. It's tough to say the audience has "sympathy" for this monstrous man, but Rooker makes damn sure our cup runneth over with knotted, twisted, morally complicated empathy. And then, when we think there's some kind of redemption on the horizon for Henry, Rooker callously stuffs that hope shut. A fearless piece of screen acting, a benchmark for permissible extremity in horror cinema, another work that forced every performance to come to swim in its wake.

Roy Scheider, 'Jaws'

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Image via Universal Pictures

When it comes to Jaws, the film that merged horror and blockbuster filmmaking in a way that transformed cinema forever, you've got your pick of the litter for excellent male performances. But my heart will always belong to Roy Scheider's Chief Brody, a subtle piece of screen acting brilliance anchored to a bubbling conscience that reaches beyond his grasps at "authentic masculinity." The showing off scars sequence is one for the textbooks; while Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw performatively, aggressively share the stories that led to their being damaged, Scheider remains largely silent, prickly, offering a sour, self-aware smile that knows he's not quite on the same wavelength as these "men." Scheider's discomfort is all for Jaws' benefit, and refreshingly lacking in ego. He's our anchor to this new, unusual world; he gets to drop casually deductive lines like "We're gonna need a bigger boat" because he's learning about these circumstances along with us; he is a powerful everyman because of how powerless he's willing to appear. More leading blockbuster performances like this, please!

Eihi Shiina, 'Audition'

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Image via Vitagraph Films

Eihi Shiina is asked to shoulder the inherent twist on which Audition hinges. She's asked to commit to one base reality before revealing, quite starkly, a heart-stopping misdirect. Essentially, Shiina gives performances for two vastly different genres — cutesy romantic drama and gnarled visceral horror — and knocks them both out of the park, even twisting their commonalities together, communicating Takashi Miike's comments on the misogynistic problematics of such genre tropes perfectly. Shiina is a powerhouse in this film, delivering unforgettable work, twisting how we view horror cinema, onscreen "monsters," and female characters simultaneously — while also, simply, scaring the absolute hell out of us. "Kiri" indeed.

Will Smith, 'I Am Legend'

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Image via Warner Bros.

There are two moments in the ever-underrated I Am Legend that vault Will Smith head and shoulders above any other actor who could've taken this "one movie star versus a bunch of zombies" premise and phoned it in. Mind you, I think Smith's work in this film is unilaterally excellent, and easily one of his best performances on any day; these two scenes just strike me as particularly fearless, unusual, and bold.

Scene One: When a couple of actual, other people find their way into Smith's inherently isolated home compound, the child is excited to watch a DVD of Shrek. And then Smith shows up behind her. And, with passionless, dead-eyed obligation, he speaks along with the film. Both Shrek and Donkey's parts, delivered perfectly, with absolutely no soul behind it. A chillingly strange portrait of a man going through the motions, losing his heart, his hope, his soul.

Scene Two: Some time after these people have changed Smith's life, for better and for worse, he heads into his favorite "store" where he talks to his "favorite customer," whom, I should mention, is a mannequin that Smith has set up as a desperate facsimile of real life. Except this time, something's off. Smith swears that the mannequin has moved, that maybe it's been alive this whole time. And he pulls a gun on this mannequin's head, tears welling in his eyes, at the end of his rope. That's right: Will Smith is asked to perform a scene of emotional desperation, violence, and horror while holding a gun to a mannequin's head. And goddammit, I believe him!

All hail Prince Smith, who gave I Am Legend everything and more, committing hard to wild choices and striking gold (unfortunately not Oscar gold) along the way.