What do this year’s wish-gone-wrong tale Obsession, gross-out transformation bloodbath The Substance, and Jordan Peele’s generational masterpiece Get Out have in common? Well, they’re all modern horror success stories, with critics and at the box office, and they broke free of genre snobbery to become awards-season contenders. They’re also toe-tapping laugh riots.
At least that’s what the Golden Globes would have you believe. The Globes present a conundrum for horror. Its major categories are split into either “drama” or “musical or comedy” and it’s fair to say neither of those is an obvious home for throat-ripping gorefests or white-knuckle ghost-train rides.
So if you’re managing an awards push for a hotly tipped horror, what road do you take? The answer, often, is titters and tap-dancing. That’s what has happened with Obsession.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, Focus Features will submit it for consideration in the musical or comedy categories. This is despite the fact the movie is a pitch-dark story about what happens when a lonely man Bear (Michael Johnston) uses a magical trinket to force female pal Nikki (Inde Navarrette) to fall devotedly in love with him. The consequences are stark, with a descent into madness that includes Navarrette delivering some of the most terrifying facial expressions since Gordon Brown attempted to smile.
The closest thing Obsession has to a knock-knock joke is when someone is graphically bludgeoned to death with a brick. Not exactly a zinger worthy of the Apollo. But it’s easy to see how this impulse towards category chicanery arises.
Traditionally, the drama category is where the big-hitters duke it out. This year, it’s likely to be a straight fight between Christopher Nolan’s exceptional take on The Odyssey and the Spanish LGBTQ+ epic La Bola Negra. That’s not to mention Dune: Part Three, which could ride a Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King-style wave if Denis Villeneuve can bring Frank Herbert’s books to a satisfying conclusion.
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