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In the realm of modern movie-making, a fresh generation of creators is stretching the edges of the scary movie genre. Ranging from social allegories to intense fright-fests, these eight filmmakers are producing lasting adventures that reimagine dread for a new generation.

Jordan Peele

The creator behind Get Out has created pointed allegories delving into the risks, subtleties, and paradoxes of Black life in the US. Peele's influence is clear from the multitude of copycats, with the finest of them guided by Peele himself through his production company.

Robert Eggers

A masterful excavator of the least known pockets of the history, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu is known for uncovering the alien elements of distant history and depicting them devoid of contemporary revisionism. Eggers' sinister historical explorations create doorways to psychosis, desire, and transformation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The modern director with their focus most attuned to the generation’s spirit, as sensitive to the loneliness, and meaningful bonds, of an digitally-obsessed era. Channeling themes of relationships and pop culture by way of trans experiences and the history of physical terror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the most unsettling fissures of the self.

Damien Leone

The director's three-part saga of Terrifier movies is this decade's significant scary movie achievement, testament that audience buzz can still produce bona fide successes from well-executed microbudget violence. Beyond the next horror villain, deranged poster boy Art the Clown is evidence that the public’s thirst for blood – gratuitous, hilarious, unchecked – remains endless.

Rose Glass

Obscuring the boundary between hallucination and actuality, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has created a gallery of driven women pushed to limits by the depth of their commitment to warped ideals. Known for surreal endings that question straightforward understandings into question, her films remain – though not so much like a stone in your footwear than a spike in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

Emerging from the early beginnings of digital platform came a pair of siblings dominating the film industry with a current style of shock. With their works Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they created shocking displays in between credible depictions of how current youth behave. Cinema enthusiasts idolize them as if they’re recently declared saints.

Julia Ducournau

The director's sleek, metaphor-forward blend of genre trappings with art film touches earned her a Palme d’Or, the initial instance the festival gave its premier award to a terror movie. Bearing the viscera-flecked standard of the extreme cinema wave, the Titane filmmaker indulges the cravings of the alienated to remarkable result.

Asian Horror Visionary

Among the most intriguing filmmakers to emerge from Asia in modern times, the Korean director has directed one masterpiece of folk horror (The Wailing) and co-scripted one more (The Medium). Arranged with supreme certainty and meticulous tonal control, his films transforms conventional structures into horrifying, unique forms.

These eight directors embody the varied and innovative direction of the horror genre, propelling the boundaries of terror into unexplored territories.