When Ryan Coogler pitched his script for “Sinners” in January 2024, he had no idea the level of cultural significance it would hold just one year after its initial release in April 2025. On a reported budget of $90-100 million and with word-of-mouth as the primary advertising force, it became one of the highest-grossing R-rated horror movies ever, drawing in over $370 million at the box office.
With its primary focus being Black culture and the history and impact of the Blues genre, the film has inspired Halloween costumes, outfits, new music, edits and custom fan-made t-shirts.
It broke records throughout the 2026 award season, earning 13 nominations at the BAFTAs (the most ever given to a film by a Black director), 18 nominations and 13 wins at the NAACP Image Awards, 17 nominations and four wins at the Critics Choice Awards and a few Golden Globes, including Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. This March, it became the most nominated film in Academy Award history with a stunning 16 nominations.
By the end of the night, it went home with four of them: Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Score. On the surface, these accomplishments are impressive enough, but with the added knowledge that these accolades went toward a horror movie, it becomes even more of a monumental achievement, seeing as the genre is nearly never recognized during award season.
Despite all this, it lost Best Picture to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.”
In all respects, “One Battle After Another” is a technical marvel. It caused the creation of new filming techniques, revived the genre of the American epic and hosted award-winning performances from its whole cast, finding its star in newcomer Chase Infiniti. Though it didn’t perform badly at the box office, pulling in an impressive $200 million as an R-rated film, its budget of nearly $175 million was simply too high for this to mean financial success. Anderson did a great job with the film, earning his win as Best Director, and Benicio Del Toro delivered one of my favorite supporting actor performances of the year.
Other than “Sinners,” it was the most decorated film of 2025. At the Oscars, it won six of its 13 nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (for Sean Penn), Best Casting and Best Editing.
In the end, though, it was not a cultural phenomenon, like “Sinners.”
This difference lies primarily in their stories.
“Sinners” is a period drama with vampires, highlighting Black culture in 1930s Mississippi when slavery still existed through sharecropping. It follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack for one day as they return from Chicago to their hometown with the goal of opening a juke joint for fellow Black people.
It’s a film for Black people made by Black people. When it opened at the box office, a reported 47% of its domestic audience was African American. On the other hand, “One Battle After Another,” set during an undisclosed time, is a drama following a former revolutionary named Bob trying to save his biracial daughter from the clutches of a white supremacist cult hidden in the American military. It follows a plot similar to that of “Finding Nemo” while attempting to provide commentary on racism in America. Only, compared to “Sinners,” it does this rather poorly, shifting its theme more towards Bob’s failures as a parent than his failures as a white man.
Still, the Academy preferred “One Battle After Another” over “Sinners” when it came to the most culturally significant award. This displayed preference has been a very common theme at the Academy for a long time.
The biggest, most recent example of what’s essentially the Academy’s cultural disregard can be found in the 13 nominations and two wins “Emilia Perez” received at the 2025 Oscars. The musical film follows a Mexican cartel leader who wants to disappear with the help of a lawyer, and the primary issue isn’t in the story; it’s in how the story was told. It was a film about Mexican people and their culture, written and directed by a French man who never visited Mexico or attempted to genuinely learn about its culture. With its harmful use of racial stereotypes and cultural misrepresentation, its nomination for Best Picture was incredibly insensitive.
The Academy is known as the most prestigious awards ceremony of the season. Even with its American roots and continuous focus on the United States, it’s renowned across the globe as a respectable platform for finding and congratulating some of the best of the best in the film industry, and so, it should be able to accurately reflect American culture.
This year has been just another letdown, highlighting the shortcomings of the Academy. With 2026’s current lineup of releases, one can hope next year’s ceremony does a better job at rewarding the most culturally impactful film with its most distinguished award.
