An Oscar-Winning 2024 Horror Movie Is Dominating HBO Max

It's a truth universally acknowledged that the Academy doesn't take horror movies all that seriously. Even if they give a couple of coveted nomination slots to horror movies during the Oscars, scary and weird movies hardly ever take home the big prize, which is frustrating, to say the least; the horror genre is in a pretty good place as of this writing, and there are so many great directors with vision and style working within it who create genuinely phenomenal and critically acclaimed work. Even though Coralie Fargeat's bravura, bloody, and bonkers horror movie "The Substance" did win a single statue at the 2025 Oscars ceremony, it still didn't get any wins in the so-called "above-the-line" categories — but now that it's a hit on HBO Max (according to FlixPatrol's charts), you can investigate the matter for yourself.

Produced by the streaming service Mubi, which enabled a theatrical run for "The Substance" and served as the film's exclusive streaming home for some time, the movie focuses on Demi Moore's fading star Elisabeth Sparkle, who makes a deal with the proverbial devil to obtain newfound youth and beauty using the titular "substance." Obviously, there are a ton of rules involved, and even more obviously, Elisabeth breaks them, leading to one gory disaster after another. So what else do you need to know about "The Substance," and in a world where the Academy actually values the horror genre, what should it have won at the 97th Academy Awards?

The "substance" that Elisabeth Sparkle takes in "The Substance" is straight up evil, but it also allows Elisabeth to spend a week at a time (in theory) in the body of a younger, "more beautiful" woman known only as Sue (a ridiculously well-cast and deployed Margaret Qualley). Here's the problem, and I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this: Even though Elisabeth is supposed to hook whichever body is currently not in use up to IVs and keep it on ice, so to speak, until she switches back after the prescribed week, she gets high on her own supply as Sue and gradually stops switching back into Elisabeth's body. As Elisabeth's body falls into disrepair from lack of use, we see it rapidly age every time Elisabeth reinhabits her "original" body, leading to a truly insane and incredibly unsettling climax where Sue and Elisabeth merge into a horrifying creature referred to as "the monstrous Elisasue." To say all hell breaks loose is ... an understatement.

On paper, this sounds like fairly straightforward body horror, but thanks to writer-director Coralie Fargeat's approach and sharply-formed message, it's anything but in practice. Amidst all of the eye-poppingly gross scenes in "The Substance," the most striking is a scene where Elisabeth, in Demi Moore's body, gets ready for a date only to attack her own face and hair when she doesn't feel like she'll possibly meet the man's expectations (or her own). "The Substance" tells its story in a gruesome and heightened way, but its message is profound: Women face impossible physical standards, and it can drive them to a point of no return.

Even though "The Substance" racked up a genuinely impressive number of Academy Award nominations for a horror movie — especially such an audacious one — at the end of the day, it only took home an Oscar for makeup and hairstyling. Though that was richly deserved based on the aforementioned monstrous Elisasue's appearance alone, I'm not the first and won't be the last to say that Demi Moore really, really deserved an Oscar for her leading role.

After an incredibly competitive awards season, Sean Baker's screwball sex worker drama "Anora" ended up anointed as the Oscars darling, taking home Best Picture (a category where "The Substance" was nominated but never had a real chance to win) as well as Best Actress, the category where the "Anora" ingenue Mikey Madison triumphed over industry veteran Moore. Moore, for her part, won the Golden Globe (though she and Madison competed in different genre categories there between drama for Moore and comedy for Madison) and the Screen Actors Guild Award for best actress. Still, a comeback narrative for Moore, who was told throughout her career that she'd never be a serious actress only to eventually earn an Academy Award nomination for one of the most delightfully bizarre movies in recent history, remained just out of reach.

You can decide for yourself whether or not Moore deserved an Oscar for "The Substance," because it's streaming on HBO Max now and is just one of several great projects you should check out on the streamer this week.