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Across the world of contemporary filmmaking, a innovative cohort of creators is pushing the edges of the scary movie style. Ranging from cultural allegories to graphic thrillers, these 8 movie-makers are crafting memorable journeys that redefine terror for a current age.

The Mind Behind Get Out

The filmmaker of Get Out has crafted spring-loaded metaphors examining the risks, nuances, and contradictions of African American experience in the US. Peele's effect is obvious from the sheer number of followers, with the top of them guided by Peele himself via his studio.

Master of Historical Horror

An expert uncoverer of the most obscure pockets of the past, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu is known for finding the foreign elements of past epochs and depicting them devoid of present-day reinterpretation. Eggers' dark journeys into the past create doorways to madness, longing, and elevation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The modern filmmaker with their finger most in touch with the younger spirit, as attuned to the loneliness, and deep connections, of an digitally-obsessed era. Weaving ideas of bonding and popular media by way of trans identity and the legacy of body horror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow delve into the strangest fissures of the identity.

Gore Maestro

The director's three-part saga of Terrifier features is this century’s significant scary movie triumph, evidence that audience buzz can still produce true hits from well-executed low-budget gore. More than the modern slasher icon, insane poster boy Art the Clown is confirmation that the audience's desire for blood – excessive, hilarious, unrestrained – remains insatiable.

Rose Glass

Obscuring the boundary between hallucination and actuality, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has assembled a portfolio of intense protagonists pushed to limits by the depth of their commitment to warped ideals. Prone to imaginative endings that question easy understandings into suspicion, her movies stay with you – though not so much like a pebble in your footwear than a sharp object in your sole.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the primordial ooze of digital platform arose a duo of filmmakers conquering the film industry with a trendy style of provocation. With their works Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged violent spectacles in between authentic representations of how modern teenagers act. Cinema enthusiasts idolize them as if they’re freshly declared saints.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

Her sleek, symbolism-rich fusion of scary movie conventions with arthouse styles gained her a prestigious award, the historic moment the Cannes Film Festival gave its top prize to a terror movie. Holding the viscera-flecked standard of the French horror movement, the Titane filmmaker indulges the cravings of the isolated to stunning effect.

Na Hong-jin

A member of the most thrilling filmmakers to emerge from the Asian continent in modern times, the Seoul-based filmmaker has directed one masterpiece of traditional terror (The Wailing) and co-scripted a second one (The Medium). Structured with supreme confidence and precise tonal control, his movies converts mainstream formulas into terrifying, novel styles.

These directors represent the wide-ranging and groundbreaking future of horror, pushing the boundaries of fear into fresh dimensions.