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Within the realm of modern filmmaking, a new wave of creators is stretching the boundaries of the scary movie style. Ranging from social allegories to visceral thrillers, these 8 directors are creating memorable journeys that reimagine terror for a current generation.

Jordan Peele

The filmmaker behind Get Out has crafted pointed allegories examining the perils, nuances, and conflicts of African American experience in the America. His influence is clear from the abundance of followers, with the top within them guided by Peele himself through his Monkeypaw.

Master of Historical Horror

An expert excavator of the most obscure corners of the history, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu is known for revealing the unfamiliar elements of past epochs and depicting them without contemporary reinterpretation. Eggers' sinister historical explorations create doorways to psychosis, desire, and transcendence.

Jane Schoenbrun

The contemporary filmmaker with their finger closest to the millennial heartbeat, as sensitive to the solitudes, and significant relationships, of an online-focused age. Weaving concepts of bonding and pop culture through gender transition and the legacy of body horror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the most unsettling fractures of the psyche.

Damien Leone

The director's three-part saga of Terrifier movies is this decade's major scary movie triumph, evidence that word of mouth can still generate bona fide blockbusters from expertly crafted low-budget bloodshed. More than the new Jason or Freddy, psychotic icon Art the Clown is proof that the public’s thirst for gore – gratuitous, hilarious, unrestrained – remains insatiable.

Rose Glass

Merging the line between hallucination and the real world, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has built a collection of powerful women compelled to extremes by the strength of their dedication to warped beliefs. Given to surreal grand finales that question easy readings into question, her works remain – though not so much like a rock in your shoe than a nail in your sole.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the early beginnings of online video arrived a team of filmmakers dominating the film industry with a zeitgeisty type of shock. With their works Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they created atrocity exhibitions in between realistic representations of how modern young people think. Cinema enthusiasts look up to them as if they’re recently declared heroes.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

Her sleek, allegory-driven fusion of scary movie conventions with independent touches earned her a top Cannes prize, the historic moment the Cannes Film Festival gave its premier award to a scary film. Bearing the viscera-flecked standard of the extreme cinema wave, the Titane creator explores the cravings of the alienated to stunning result.

Asian Horror Visionary

Among the most thrilling talents to emerge from Eastern cinema in the past decade, the Korean director has crafted one masterpiece of mythical fear (The Wailing) and co-written another (The Medium). Paced with absolute certainty and exact tonal control, his work transforms conventional structures into horrifying, original shapes.

These eight filmmakers embody the varied and groundbreaking future of scary cinema, pushing the limits of dread into fresh territories.