While Al Pacino all involved with horror movies in the last year.

As well-received as some of the Robert Eggers' vampire movie Nosferatu has already been entered on some Academy Award lists, and Coralie Fargeat's shocking body horror movie The Substance has early awards buzz as well. It remains to be seen if either movie can the short but impressive list of horror movies that have been nominated for Best Picture in the past.

Best Picture Nominee: The Exorcist (1973)

Directed by William Friedkin

While it was far from the first horror movie to ever receive any kind of Academy Award nomination, William Friedkin's The Exorcist is the first to receive a nomination for the most prestigious award of all, Best Picture. The supernatural horror film stars Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, and then-newcomer Linda Blair as the possessed Regan MacNeil. The Exorcist is still regarded as one of the scariest movies of all time more than fifty years after its release, and the sheer scariness made it into a viral hit during the winter of 1973.

A production plagued by mysterious accidents resulted in several major injuries and even some deaths, leading people to believe the movie was cursed. When it did finally hit theaters, some audience fainted or vomited due to the shocking and upsetting nature of the content on the screen, leading to some of the best word-of-mouth marketing any movie has ever experienced. Reviews at the time were mixed thanks to public outrage at the religious blasphemy of the movie and the disturbing nature of Regan's possession, but it ended up grossing nearly $200 million in its original theatrical run.

The Exorcist received a Best Picture nomination largely due to its impact on the cultural conversation at the time of its release, although it lost to Robert Redford's celebrated heist movie The Sting. The film's production team and cast also garnered nine other nominations, including Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Sound (which it won). It has since been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry thanks to its cultural significance, and remains one of the most influential horror movies of all time.

Best Picture Nominee: Jaws (1975)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg's Jaws still holds a spot on many best monster movie lists nearly fifty years after its release, and for good reason. Its release is treated as a landmark moment in cinema history, as its exceptionally wide release yielded the first true summer blockbuster. Jaws, along with Star Wars (which was released two years later) helped to establish the current Hollywood business model of releasing large-scale and expensive action/adventure movies in the summer when recreational interest is at its height.

Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws was an adaptation of Peter Benchley's popular novel of the same name. The simple story of three men working to protect a resort town from a massive man-eating shark worked extremely well thanks to Spielberg's minimalist approach to the monster, which leaned on John Williams' famous and simple score and obscured the creature for most of the movie. It was a runaway hit with audiences across the United States, and broke many box office records upon its release.

Jaws was the original movie that inspired the "sharksploitation" subgenre of horror, which includes movies like Deep Blue Sea, 47 Meters Down, and the recent streaming hit Under Paris.

Jaws remains among the highest-rated horror movies today, and was nominated for Best Picture at the 48th Academy Awards. It ultimately lost to Miloš Forman's iconic psychological comedy-drama starring Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Like The Exorcist, Jaws was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and inspired an entire sub-genre of horror surrounding killer sharks and other unseen aquatic monstrosities.

Best Picture Nominee: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan has become infamous for including a big twist in almost all of his movies, with some being received better than others. That trend was born with The Sixth Sense, which stars Bruce Willis as a child psychologist and Haley Joel Osment as his young patient who is able to see and talk to the dead. Upon its release, audiences everywhere were shocked to learn that Bruce Willis' character was a ghost throughout the entire movie, which earned Shyamalan praise for his writing and direction, along with praise for the performances of the cast.

The Sixth Sense was nominated for Best Picture along with five other Academy Awards, including Best Director for Shyamalan. At the 72nd Academy Awards, it came up short for Best Picture, which went to Sam Mendes' American Beauty. It was a box office hit in 1999, and out-earned every movie that year except for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The Sixth Sense became a cultural phenomenon, and evolved into one of the most parodied and imitated horror movies of the last fifty years in other media.

Best Picture Nominee: Black Swan (2010)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is one of the most widely celebrated psychological horror movies ever, and its influence on the overall horror genre has been notable in the years since its release. It stars Natalie Portman in the lead role as a ballerina locked in an intense competition for the lead role in the New York City Ballet's production of Swan Lake, who eventually loses grip on reality and slips slowly into madness due to the pressure she places upon herself.

Portman actually won the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 83rd Academy Awards, and Black Swan ultimately garnered five nominations that year, including Best Picture (which it lost to Tom Hooper's The King's Speech). It was also an incredible success at the box office due to its relatively small budget; it earned $329 million on a budget of just $13 million. As great as the narrative is, Black Swan is notable on this list for how much acclaim went to the performances in the movie as opposed to the screenplay.

Best Picture Nominee: Get Out (2017)

Directed by Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele has become one of the most highly-touted directors of the last decade, and his rise to fame began with Get Out. Previously a comedy actor and writer, Peele made his directorial debut with the psychological horror film that received widespread acclaim for its social critiques told through a horror lens and wildly original screenplay. Get Out delivers scathing criticism of post-racial America and neoliberalism, which Peele disseminates through a script that deftly balances horror and humor.

Get Out also acted as the breakout role for Daniel Kaluuya, who has since gone on to earn many more award nominations in addition to his Best Actor Oscar nomination for the critical and box office hit. Get Out earned a total of four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, which it lost to Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water. It hasn't yet earned any long-term recognition at the level of a National Film Registry preservation, but Get Out is among the most influential Best Picture nominees of the last 30 years thanks to the cultural conversation it sparked.

Best Picture Winner: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Directed by Jonathan Demme

The only true horror movie to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture is Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster as FBI trainee Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs is widely regarded as one of the most influential films of the 20th century, and Hannibal Lecter among its greatest villains. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry due to the impact it made on culture and cinema.

The Silence of the Lambs remains the only true horror movie to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and despite horror's growing acceptance, it seems likely it will remain so.

Hopkins and Foster's psychological cat-and-mouse interactions are often cited as some of the finest dialogue and acting performances of any movie, much less any horror movie. Both Hopkins and Foster have earned Academy Award nominations and victories for movies besides The Silence of the Lambs, making the duo one of the most highly-decorated pair of leads in movie history. Ted Levine also garnered acclaim for his performance as the twisted serial killer "Buffalo Bill", who acts as the movie's true primary villain.

The movie is based upon Thomas Harris' 1988 novel of the same name, making The Silence of the Lambs one of the greatest literary adaptations of all time as well. The Silence of the Lambs is particularly noteworthy as one of only three films to ever win Academy Awards in five of the major categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The Silence of the Lambs remains the only true horror movie to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and despite horror's growing acceptance, it seems likely it will remain so.