The 2024 Thingy Awards Nominations have arrived! Roll out the red carpet! We’re celebrating the best of 2023 Horror Movies and are recruiting YOU to vote for these deserving nominees.
The Thingy Awards were developed to give voice to the movies that the Academy rarely recognizes. Horror Movies. This year, two films from our beloved genre received recognition at the Oscars. El Conde was nominated for Best Cinematography. Godzilla Minus One pulled a minor miracle and won for Best Visual Effects. Congratulations to both of them! Does that mean that they will win a Thingy Award? That will be up to YOU.
Once again, we are asking our online fans and industry insider connections to vote for what you believe the best horror movies were last year. And, in perhaps the favorite category, the Depends Award, you can select the WORST of last year’s horror. As usual, you will be given the opportunity to write in a candidate if you feel we left out a deserving nominee.
CLICK HERE FOR THE 2024 THINGY AWARD BALLOT.
2023 Horror in a review capsule:
- Horror movie productions were back in full swing, with big studio features, independent films, and short films all hitting on all cylinders. This was a chrysalis moment coming out of the COVID-era filming limitations.
- The SAG and WGA strikes that took place this year did not affect the content for 2023, but they clearly affected the number of films released in 2024. Ironically, this was a year where many of the features had terrific scripts.
- 2023 was a banner year for Australian-made horror movies. Evil Dead Rise, Late Night with the Devil, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism, Monolith, You’ll Never Find Me, and Talk To Me were all among the Scariest Thing’s favorite films of 2023.
- Patagonia provided two great films this year. El Conde and When Evil Lurks continue to prove that countries like Chile and Argentina will be players in the horror scene for years to come. Can Brazil be far behind? C’mon, Rio!
- XYZ was a major distribution presence with many of the best independent films of 2023.
- Possession was the big theme of the year. Exorcist Believer. The Pope’s Exorcist. Talk To Me. Late Night with the Devil. Sister Death. Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism. All of these films pushed the demonic possession route, some with familiar methods, and others that went down entirely new paths.
- Child acting in horror continues to impress. There were so many great performances by children in this year’s crop of movies. Coupled with the emergence of quality acting amongst the kiddos with the willingness of movies to kill them off, and the emotional content of horror movies just got elevated.
- The big studios (Universal… ahem!) put out some really entertaining titles but failed miserably to market these movies. The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield were super solid films that looked fantastic and were solidly entertaining but were disastrous flops. It was sadly, a bad year for Dracula at the box office. Would putting “Dracula” in the title have helped? Maybe.
- The arrival of Winnie the Pooh’s Blood and Honey is a warning shot that horror is definitely not done with bad, cheap exploitation films. It also raises a big red flag that expiring copyrights are going to be fertile picking grounds for exploitation. Oh, bother.
- The Horror Shorts from 2023 were TERRIFIC! You can watch all the nominated best horror short films through our link here.
The Vote:
So, vote your conscience! Vote for your favorites. The vote is limited to one ballot. Note that we do have write in candidates if you think we were missing something. The Thingie Awards are something that we take a lot of pride in, and you will notice that we are very inclusive, to the point of having many more candidates than your typical Oscar nominations. Part of the reason why we do this is to help promote independent horror films and filmmakers.
Since we are a small horror press, we have built our reputation on the back of independent horror and this is part of the way we help to contribute back to the horror community.
Please submit your ballots by Sunday, May 20! We will announce the winning films in an upcoming Podcast. Stay tuned.
