Eight Filmmakers Who Are Reshaping Contemporary Scary Movies
In the landscape of modern cinema, a innovative wave of visionaries is pushing the edges of the horror film category. Ranging from social commentaries to graphic chillers, these eight movie-makers are crafting unforgettable experiences that redefine fear for a current generation.
Jordan Peele
The creator behind Get Out has developed pointed metaphors delving into the risks, subtleties, and paradoxes of Black life in the US. Peele's influence is clear from the abundance of imitators, with the best within them supported by the director by way of his studio.
Master of Historical Horror
An expert excavator of the most obscure pockets of the bygone eras, this creator of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu excels in revealing the unfamiliar aspects of distant history and depicting them without present-day reinterpretation. Eggers' sinister time machines create doorways to insanity, desire, and transformation.
Voice of a Generation
The contemporary filmmaker with their focus most in touch with the millennial pulse, as sensitive to the isolation, and significant relationships, of an digitally-obsessed age. Channeling ideas of relationships and pop culture by way of trans experiences and the legacy of body horror, creations such as I Saw the TV Glow plumb the strangest cracks of the identity.
Damien Leone
Leone’s trilogy of Terrifier films is this decade's great scary movie achievement, testament that audience buzz can still produce true successes from skillfully made low-budget gore. Beyond the modern horror villain, psychotic poster boy Art the Clown is confirmation that the audience's craving for violence – excessive, comical, unbridled – remains endless.
Blurrer of Realities
Merging the boundary between delusion and actuality, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, Glass has built a gallery of intense female characters driven to extremes by the strength of their commitment to distorted beliefs. Given to fantastical endings that call straightforward readings into suspicion, her films remain – though less like a pebble in your footwear than a spike in your sole.
Danny and Michael Philippou
From the primordial ooze of YouTube arose a pair of brothers taking over the world with a zeitgeisty type of controversy. With their works Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they presented shocking displays in between authentic depictions of how modern teenagers think. Aspiring directors idolize them as if they’re recently made icons.
Julia Ducournau
The director's polished, symbolism-rich combination of scary movie conventions with arthouse flourishes earned her a Palme d’Or, the first time the Cannes Film Festival awarded its highest honor to a terror movie. Bearing the blood-soaked flag of the French horror movement, the Titane creator indulges the desires of the alienated to stunning outcome.
Na Hong-jin
One of the most thrilling filmmakers to come forth from Asia in the past decade, the Seoul-based director has crafted one masterpiece of folk horror (The Wailing) and co-scripted another (The Medium). Structured with absolute certainty and exact atmosphere crafting, his films converts Hollywood templates into terrifying, unique shapes.
These filmmakers represent the varied and creative future of horror, pushing the boundaries of fear into fresh territories.
