🔗 Share this article

Within the landscape of current movie-making, a fresh cohort of visionaries is pushing the limits of the scary movie style. Ranging from cultural commentaries to graphic fright-fests, these eight filmmakers are producing memorable journeys that reimagine terror for a current generation.

Jordan Peele

The director of Get Out has crafted spring-loaded metaphors exploring the risks, subtleties, and contradictions of Black life in the United States. His effect is evident from the abundance of followers, with the finest within them guided by the director by way of his Monkeypaw.

Robert Eggers

A skilled uncoverer of the least known recesses of the bygone eras, this creator of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu is known for uncovering the alien facets of past epochs and showing them devoid of contemporary reinterpretation. Eggers' dark time machines create doorways to psychosis, craving, and transformation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The modern creator with their focus most attuned to the younger heartbeat, as aware of the solitudes, and significant relationships, of an online-focused era. Weaving themes of bonding and popular media by way of trans identity and the history of corporeal fear, works such as I Saw the TV Glow delve into the most unsettling fissures of the identity.

Damien Leone

The director's three-part saga of Terrifier films is this century’s great horror success story, evidence that fan support can still create true successes from skillfully made microbudget violence. Beyond the new Jason or Freddy, deranged poster boy Art the Clown is confirmation that the public’s craving for gore – gratuitous, comical, unbridled – remains unslakable.

Rose Glass

Blurring the boundary between fantasy and actuality, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has created a gallery of powerful female characters compelled to extremes by the strength of their devotion to warped values. Known for surreal endings that question simple readings into question, her works remain – though not so much like a stone in your shoe than a spike in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the early beginnings of digital platform arrived a pair of brothers dominating the film industry with a zeitgeisty brand of provocation. With their works Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged shocking displays in between authentic depictions of how modern teenagers behave. Aspiring directors idolize them as if they’re freshly made heroes.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

The director's sleek, allegory-driven blend of genre trappings with independent styles won her a prestigious award, the historic moment the festival gave its premier award to a terror movie. Holding the blood-soaked flag of the French horror movement, the Titane creator delves into the appetites of the alienated to stunning result.

Asian Horror Visionary

Among the most exciting artists to come forth from the Asian continent in modern times, the Korean director has directed one gem of traditional terror (The Wailing) and co-written one more (The Medium). Structured with total confidence and precise tonal control, his films transforms conventional structures into terrifying, novel styles.

The listed creators embody the wide-ranging and innovative path of scary cinema, pushing the boundaries of terror into fresh realms.