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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”<\/a> did<\/em> win a single statue at the 2025 Oscars ceremony, it still didn’t get any wins in the so-called “above-the-line” categories \u2014 but now that it’s a hit on HBO Max (according to FlixPatrol<\/a>‘s charts), you can investigate the matter for yourself.<\/p>\n 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.”\u00a0Obviously, 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\u00a0should<\/em> it have won at the 97th Academy Awards?<\/p>\n