🔗 Share this article

Across the realm of current movie-making, a new wave of creators is pushing the boundaries of the horror film style. Ranging from social metaphors to graphic chillers, these 8 movie-makers are producing memorable adventures that reimagine terror for a current era.

Jordan Peele

The filmmaker of Get Out has crafted pointed allegories delving into the dangers, complexities, and conflicts of Black existence in the America. His impact is obvious from the abundance of followers, with the finest among them guided by the director through his studio.

Robert Eggers

A masterful explorer of the darkest recesses of the history, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in revealing the alien elements of past epochs and depicting them devoid of present-day revisionism. His unholy time machines create doorways to psychosis, desire, and transcendence.

Jane Schoenbrun

The contemporary director with their finger closest to the younger heartbeat, as sensitive to the solitudes, and meaningful bonds, of an online-focused time. Channeling ideas of relationships and popular media via trans identity and the legacy of body horror, works such as I Saw the TV Glow delve into the most unsettling cracks of the identity.

Gore Maestro

The director's series of Terrifier films is this era's significant scary movie triumph, testament that word of mouth can still generate bona fide blockbusters from well-executed small-scale bloodshed. More than the next slasher icon, deranged poster boy Art the Clown is confirmation that the public’s desire for gore – gratuitous, hilarious, unbridled – remains insatiable.

Rose Glass

Blurring the division between fantasy and actuality, with her movies Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, Glass has built a gallery of powerful protagonists compelled to the edge by the depth of their devotion to distorted beliefs. Given to surreal climaxes that question simple interpretations into doubt, her films linger – though not so much like a rock in your shoe than a sharp object in your sole.

YouTube Sensations

From the humble origins of YouTube came a team of siblings conquering the world with a zeitgeisty type of controversy. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they presented atrocity exhibitions in between authentic portrayals of how today’s young people think. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re newly canonised saints.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

The director's polished, metaphor-forward combination of scary movie conventions with independent styles earned her a top Cannes prize, the first time the Cannes Film Festival gave its highest honor to a horror picture. Carrying the blood-soaked banner of the extreme cinema wave, the Titane filmmaker explores the desires of the alienated to remarkable outcome.

Asian Horror Visionary

Among the most thrilling talents to come forth from Eastern cinema in recent years, the Korean filmmaker has crafted one gem of mythical fear (The Wailing) and co-scripted a second one (The Medium). Paced with total assurance and precise tonal control, his films transposes conventional structures into terrifying, original shapes.

These eight creators represent the varied and groundbreaking path of the horror genre, driving the edges of terror into new dimensions.