If Inde Navarrette Gets an Oscar Nomination for ‘Obsession’, It Should Be for Best Actress

I am still deeply scarred by Toni Collette’s Oscar snub for Hereditary.

I didn’t necessarily expect her to win. That was never really the point. The point is that she deserved to be nominated, and the fact that she wasn’t felt like one of the clearest examples of how dismissive Hollywood could still be toward horror. For horror fans, it wasn’t simply about Toni Collette. It was about what her performance represented.

For years, we had been begging to be taken seriously. Horror had spent decades producing incredible filmmakers, incredible actors, and incredible films, only to be pushed aside whenever awards season rolled around. Then Hereditary happened. Whether or not you like A24’s style of horror, there was something undeniably important about that movie. It crossed over in a way horror films rarely do. Critics embraced it. General audiences embraced it. Hollywood embraced it.

And at the center of all of that was Toni Collette.

Ari Aster directed a phenomenal film and delivered one of the most important horror debuts of the last twenty years. But Collette elevated that movie to another level entirely. Her performance wasn’t just great for a horror movie. It was one of the best performances of the year, regardless of genre. She carried the emotional weight of that film on her shoulders and somehow made every second of it feel authentic. Grief, rage, guilt, despair, terror. It was all there.

Whether she would have won the Oscar is beside the point. The fact that she wasn’t even invited into the conversation remains one of the most frustrating award decisions I’ve ever seen.

Maybe that’s why this past awards season felt so satisfying.

For the first time in what feels like forever, horror wasn’t standing outside the room asking for permission to enter. Horror was the conversation. Horror performances were being recognized. Horror filmmakers were being celebrated. Horror films were competing across major categories and, more importantly, winning. Sure, there were still people doing mental gymnastics and calling everything a thriller, but horror fans knew exactly what was happening.