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In the realm of contemporary filmmaking, a innovative cohort of visionaries is expanding the edges of the scary movie genre. Ranging from societal allegories to graphic thrillers, these eight filmmakers are producing lasting adventures that reshape terror for a new generation.

Jordan Peele

The creator behind Get Out has crafted pointed symbolic tales delving into the perils, complexities, and paradoxes of African American experience in the United States. Peele's impact is clear from the multitude of imitators, with the best among them nurtured by the filmmaker via his production company.

Robert Eggers

A skilled excavator of the darkest recesses of the history, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu excels in revealing the foreign facets of past epochs and presenting them without modern-day alteration. Eggers' dark journeys into the past open portals to madness, desire, and elevation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The millennial director with their focus closest to the millennial pulse, as sensitive to the solitudes, and significant relationships, of an digitally-obsessed era. Channeling ideas of connection and mainstream entertainment through trans identity and the history of corporeal fear, works such as I Saw the TV Glow delve into the eeriest cracks of the psyche.

Damien Leone

Leone’s series of Terrifier features is this era's great scary movie achievement, evidence that word of mouth can still create genuine successes from expertly crafted small-scale violence. Beyond the next horror villain, deranged figure Art the Clown is proof that the viewers' thirst for gore – gratuitous, humorous, unchecked – remains endless.

Blurrer of Realities

Blurring the division between fantasy and actuality, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has built a portfolio of powerful women compelled to extremes by the depth of their commitment to twisted beliefs. Given to imaginative climaxes that challenge straightforward understandings into suspicion, her films stay with you – though not so much like a pebble in your shoe than a sharp object in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the humble origins of digital platform arose a team of brothers dominating the world with a trendy style of provocation. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they created shocking displays in between realistic representations of how today’s youth think. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re newly made saints.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

The director's polished, metaphor-forward fusion of genre trappings with art film flourishes earned her a Palme d’Or, the historic moment the festival presented its top prize to a scary film. Holding the gore-stained standard of the French horror movement, the Titane creator explores the appetites of the isolated to stunning result.

Na Hong-jin

A member of the most thrilling talents to arise from Eastern cinema in recent years, the Seoul-based director has made one masterpiece of traditional terror (The Wailing) and collaborated on one more (The Medium). Paced with total assurance and precise mood management, his work transforms Hollywood templates into frightful, original styles.

The listed filmmakers represent the wide-ranging and innovative future of the horror genre, driving the limits of dread into unexplored territories.