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Within the realm of contemporary cinema, a fresh cohort of creators is stretching the limits of the scary movie style. Ranging from social metaphors to visceral chillers, these eight filmmakers are creating lasting journeys that reimagine terror for a modern era.

Jordan Peele

The creator of Get Out has created pointed symbolic tales exploring the perils, subtleties, and conflicts of Black life in the America. His impact is obvious from the multitude of copycats, with the finest within them guided by Peele himself via his Monkeypaw.

Robert Eggers

An expert explorer of the darkest corners of the past, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in revealing the foreign elements of distant history and depicting them free from contemporary revisionism. Eggers' dark historical explorations create doorways to madness, desire, and transformation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The millennial director with their pulse most attuned to the millennial heartbeat, as aware of the solitudes, and significant relationships, of an internet-besotted age. Channeling ideas of connection and popular media by way of gender transition and the history of body horror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow delve into the strangest fissures of the self.

Damien Leone

The director's series of Terrifier movies is this century’s great scary movie triumph, testament that fan support can still generate bona fide blockbusters from expertly crafted microbudget bloodshed. More than the new horror villain, deranged icon Art the Clown is confirmation that the viewers' desire for gore – excessive, humorous, unrestrained – remains unslakable.

Rose Glass

Obscuring the division between hallucination and the real world, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has created a collection of driven women pushed to extremes by the intensity of their dedication to warped ideals. Known for imaginative grand finales that question easy understandings into suspicion, her movies stay with you – though not so much like a rock in your footwear than a sharp object in your foot.

YouTube Sensations

From the early beginnings of online video came a pair of filmmakers conquering the world with a trendy style of controversy. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they created violent spectacles in between realistic representations of how today’s youth act. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re freshly made saints.

Julia Ducournau

Her sleek, symbolism-rich combination of horror elements with arthouse styles gained her a top Cannes prize, the historic moment the festival gave its premier award to a horror picture. Carrying the blood-soaked standard of the New French Extremity, the Titane director indulges the appetites of the isolated to stunning result.

Asian Horror Visionary

One of the most exciting artists to arise from Eastern cinema in modern times, the Korean creator has made one masterpiece of traditional terror (The Wailing) and co-scripted one more (The Medium). Paced with supreme certainty and precise tonal control, his work transforms mainstream formulas into horrifying, original shapes.

The listed directors represent the wide-ranging and groundbreaking direction of the horror genre, driving the boundaries of terror into unexplored realms.