Last year the New Academy Kidz (i.e., the younger, more diverse members invited to join in 2015 and ’16 by former Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs) decided that horror-genre films can and should be regarded as Oscar bait, as evidenced by Best Picture nominations for The Shape of Water and Get Out.
And so, naturally, John Krasinski‘s hugely successful A Quiet Place, having earned a first-weekend haul of $50 million, is now being trumpeted as a potential Best Picture contender. Or it is, at least, in the speculative mind of In Contention‘s Kris Tapley.
Hollywood Elsewhere says no — Krasinski’s film is very well done but (a) having a baby in the middle of a scourge of sound-driven monsters is flat-out ridiculous, (b) the hearing-aid finale doesn’t quite slam it home and (c) at the risk of sounding hopelessly out-of-it, just because a very smart and efficient film has made a lot of money…am I allowed to say this?…making a lot of money doesn’t necessarily put a film in the class of a Best Picture contender.
I know, I know…the New Academy Kidz, whose taste buds, one could argue, aren’t exactly refined and high-end, don’t necessarily see things that way. They don’t much care for traditional old-fart Oscar-bait material, they have a place in their hearts for horror and genre stuff, and they want to give others in the industry a chance so sure…why not?