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In the realm of contemporary filmmaking, a innovative generation of visionaries is expanding the boundaries of the horror style. Ranging from societal commentaries to intense fright-fests, these eight movie-makers are crafting unforgettable adventures that reimagine dread for a new age.

Jordan Peele

The director of Get Out has created sharp allegories examining the dangers, complexities, and contradictions of African American experience in the United States. His impact is evident from the sheer number of followers, with the finest within them nurtured by Peele himself by way of his production company.

Robert Eggers

A skilled excavator of the most obscure corners of the past, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in finding the alien elements of historical periods and presenting them without modern-day revisionism. His dark historical explorations open portals to psychosis, longing, and transcendence.

Voice of a Generation

The millennial director with their focus most attuned to the younger heartbeat, as sensitive to the isolation, and significant relationships, of an digitally-obsessed age. Weaving themes of connection and popular media through gender transition and the legacy of corporeal fear, films such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the strangest cracks of the psyche.

Damien Leone

The director's three-part saga of Terrifier films is this century’s major scary movie triumph, evidence that word of mouth can still generate bona fide blockbusters from expertly crafted small-scale gore. More than the next slasher icon, insane icon Art the Clown is confirmation that the audience's craving for violence – over-the-top, comical, unbridled – remains unslakable.

Rose Glass

Obscuring the boundary between fantasy and reality, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, Glass has assembled a gallery of powerful protagonists compelled to extremes by the intensity of their devotion to warped ideals. Prone to surreal endings that call simple understandings into question, her movies linger – though not so much like a pebble in your shoe than a spike in your sole.

YouTube Sensations

From the humble origins of online video arose a team of siblings taking over the film industry with a trendy type of shock. With their movies Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they created violent spectacles in between realistic portrayals of how today’s youth act. Film students idolize them as if they’re freshly made saints.

Julia Ducournau

The director's refined, symbolism-rich combination of scary movie conventions with arthouse styles won her a Palme d’Or, the historic moment the festival gave its top prize to a horror picture. Carrying the gore-stained standard of the New French Extremity, the Titane director explores the cravings of the disconnected to stunning result.

Na Hong-jin

A member of the most exciting talents to arise from the Asian continent in the past decade, the South Korean filmmaker has made one jewel of traditional terror (The Wailing) and co-scripted a second one (The Medium). Paced with supreme certainty and meticulous atmosphere crafting, his films converts mainstream formulas into frightful, novel styles.

The listed filmmakers represent the varied and innovative path of scary cinema, driving the edges of terror into unexplored realms.