Eight Directors That Are Redefining Today's Scary Movies

In the world of modern cinema, a innovative cohort of visionaries is expanding the edges of the scary movie category. From social commentaries to visceral fright-fests, these 8 movie-makers are crafting memorable journeys that redefine fear for a modern generation.

Jordan Peele

The director of Get Out has developed pointed symbolic tales delving into the risks, subtleties, and conflicts of Black life in the America. Peele's effect is clear from the sheer number of followers, with the best of them supported by Peele himself via his studio.

Master of Historical Horror

A skilled excavator of the darkest recesses of the history, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in revealing the alien aspects of historical periods and depicting them free from present-day reinterpretation. Eggers' dark historical explorations unlock gateways to psychosis, longing, and transcendence.

Jane Schoenbrun

The modern creator with their focus most attuned to the younger pulse, as sensitive to the loneliness, and deep connections, of an digitally-obsessed time. Filtering themes of bonding and mainstream entertainment via gender transition and the legacy of body horror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the most unsettling fissures of the psyche.

Gore Maestro

The director's trilogy of Terrifier movies is this century’s great scary movie triumph, proof that audience buzz can still produce genuine hits from skillfully made microbudget bloodshed. More than the next horror villain, insane icon Art the Clown is proof that the public’s craving for gore – over-the-top, hilarious, unbridled – remains unslakable.

Rose Glass

Blurring the division between hallucination and actuality, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has created a gallery of intense female characters pushed to extremes by the depth of their commitment to distorted values. Known for imaginative grand finales that call easy readings into doubt, her films remain – though not so much like a pebble in your footwear than a spike in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the primordial ooze of online video arrived a team of filmmakers taking over the film industry with a trendy brand of provocation. With their movies Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged atrocity exhibitions in between authentic representations of how modern teenagers behave. Film students pray to them as if they’re freshly declared saints.

Julia Ducournau

The director's polished, symbolism-rich fusion of genre trappings with independent styles earned her a Palme d’Or, the initial instance the festival gave its premier award to a horror picture. Holding the gore-stained standard of the extreme cinema wave, the Titane filmmaker explores the cravings of the disconnected to remarkable effect.

Na Hong-jin

A member of the most thrilling artists to come forth from Asia in the past decade, the South Korean creator has made one gem of folk horror (The Wailing) and co-written another (The Medium). Paced with total assurance and meticulous tonal control, his work transforms mainstream formulas into terrifying, novel shapes.