Amy Madigan’s ‘Weapons’ Oscar Win Is the First Performance To Achieve This Feat in 58 Years

What you might not know is that the actor’s win breaks a particularly long drought for the category, as the last person to win Best Supporting Actress for a horror movie was over half a century ago, for 1958’s Rosemary’s Baby. Both Madigan and her predecessor, Ruth Gordon, gave performances that chilled audiences to the bone thanks to subverting expectations and immediately put their stamp on horror folklore.

‘Weapons’ Villain Aunt Gladys Became an Instant Horror Icon

The veteran actor stole the show in Weapons as Aunt Gladys, the antagonist of Cregger’s creepy classic. As the people of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, search for 17 children who disappeared in the night, it emerges that Gladys has moved into the house of the Lilly family, claiming to look after their young boy, Alex (Cary Christopher), as his parents are ill. In reality, she is a parasitic witch capable of controlling people by owning something of theirs. Forcing Alex to help her, she is behind the children’s disappearance and intends to drain their life force to preserve her own.

As with many classic horror performances, the terror of Madigan’s Aunt Gladys comes from a sinister twist on innocent themes. Just as Norman Bates made the sanctity of a shower deadly, or Damien Thorn made the sanctity of childhood demonic, Gladys is a terrifying twist on a kindly older relative, who is revealed to have the predatory cunning of a supernatural beast. She dons makeup and a bright wig that feels similar to what you would see an eccentric aunt wear, but just slightly heightened to make her unsettling. Furthermore, she is not like any cackling witch you might have seen in a fairy tale. She calmly manipulates all around her, especially children, making our most primal fears a reality and destroying our notions of where or who is safe.It’s a layered, complex performance that did enough to convince voters that she was the worthy winner of this year’s Best Supporting Actress prize. In doing so, she replicated a feat that you would have to travel back over five decades to see.

The Antagonist of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ Broke the Mold

You have to go back to 1968 to find the last time a horror film was awarded Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. The film was Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski’s legendary horror starring Mia Farrow as a young expectant mother who suspects that her neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), have sinister intentions toward her child. Those suspicions are confirmed in horrifying fashion when it emerges that the couple is part of a satanic coven who are preparing her to give birth to the Antichrist.

There is some common ground with Gladys regarding what makes Minnie so frightening. She wears colorful clothes and makeup, and she has an initially kind demeanor that makes you doubt she could do any harm. Once again, the terror lies in the mundane. Who would suspect that a friendly, if slightly fussy, elderly couple next door could be linked to something so dark and sinful? Like Gladys, the very people you would expect to trust in nurturing a baby have harmful intentions toward it, creating a paradox that is anxiety-inducing, particularly during the film’s shocking climax.

Rosemary’s Baby would go down as an all-time great of the horror genre, with the Castevet’s legacy furthered in 2024 with the series Apartment 7A, a prequel which coincidentally also stars Weapons actor Julia Garner. Dianne Wiest takes over the role of Minnie from Gordon (who passed away in 1985).

Amy Madigan Joins a Rare Group of Horror Oscar Winners

The Weapons star’s Best Supporting Actress win is a rarity in that category, but horror performances are also scarcely recognized by the Academy in general. Before this year’s awards, only six actors had ever won an Oscar for a horror film. Gordon’s win came over thirty years after the first, Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932, Best Actor). Kathy Bates would win Best Actress for playing Annie Wilkes in 1990’s Misery, while Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster would scoop the Best Actor and Actress awards for The Silence of the Lambs the following year. We would then wait almost two decades for Natalie Portman to win Best Actress for the 2010 psychological horror Black Swan.

Madigan’s win, as well as Michael B. Jordan’s Best Actor award for Sinners, are made all the more remarkable given that they are just the seventh and eighth actors ever to achieve such a feat for a horror movie. The Oscars have generally been less favorable to genre films, compared to Academy-friendly fare such as dramas or biopics. However, Aunt Gladys was a performance that just couldn’t be denied. Cregger himself claimed in an interview with Vanity Fair that Madigan “saved” the film, and that, “without her, the movie doesn’t work”. It’s apt, then, that such an impactful film should be celebrated through its most prominent performance.

Only time will tell whether Amy Madigan’s win is a shift in the Academy’s way of thinking, or if we will have to wait another 58 years for someone to deliver something as memorable. Whatever the outcome, it’s a testament to the mark both Aunt Gladys and Minnie Castavet have left on movie history, creating moments that cannot be denied.Weapons is available to stream on HBO Max in the U.S.