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Within the landscape of contemporary cinema, a new wave of creators is expanding the edges of the scary movie style. Ranging from social allegories to intense fright-fests, these 8 directors are crafting memorable journeys that redefine fear for a modern age.

Jordan Peele

The director of Get Out has developed spring-loaded symbolic tales exploring the dangers, nuances, and paradoxes of Black life in the US. His impact is obvious from the sheer number of copycats, with the best of them nurtured by the filmmaker via his studio.

Robert Eggers

A masterful excavator of the most obscure recesses of the history, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu is known for finding the unfamiliar facets of distant history and showing them free from contemporary revisionism. His unholy journeys into the past open portals to madness, desire, and transcendence.

Voice of a Generation

The contemporary director with their focus closest to the generation’s spirit, as aware of the loneliness, and deep connections, of an online-focused age. Filtering ideas of bonding and pop culture by way of gender transition and the tradition of physical terror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow plumb the most unsettling fractures of the self.

Damien Leone

Leone’s three-part saga of Terrifier movies is this decade's major scary movie achievement, evidence that audience buzz can still generate true blockbusters from skillfully made small-scale gore. Beyond the next slasher icon, deranged poster boy Art the Clown is confirmation that the viewers' desire for blood – over-the-top, humorous, unchecked – remains unslakable.

Rose Glass

Obscuring the line between fantasy and actuality, with her movies Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has built a collection of powerful women driven to the edge by the strength of their commitment to warped beliefs. Prone to fantastical climaxes that call straightforward interpretations into question, her works linger – though less like a stone in your footwear than a nail in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the primordial ooze of online video came a pair of siblings taking over the film industry with a trendy brand of controversy. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged violent spectacles in between credible depictions of how today’s youth behave. Aspiring directors idolize them as if they’re recently canonised heroes.

Julia Ducournau

Her refined, symbolism-rich blend of horror elements with independent touches gained her a top Cannes prize, the first time the festival awarded its top prize to a terror movie. Holding the blood-soaked flag of the French horror movement, the Titane director indulges the cravings of the alienated to remarkable result.

Na Hong-jin

One of the most intriguing filmmakers to come forth from Eastern cinema in recent years, the South Korean filmmaker has made one gem of mythical fear (The Wailing) and co-written another (The Medium). Arranged with supreme certainty and exact atmosphere crafting, his movies transforms mainstream formulas into horrifying, original styles.

These eight creators signify the wide-ranging and creative future of the horror genre, pushing the edges of fear into new territories.