Eight Filmmakers That Are Redefining Modern Horror
In the realm of contemporary movie-making, a fresh generation of visionaries is pushing the limits of the scary movie category. Ranging from societal allegories to graphic chillers, these 8 movie-makers are creating memorable experiences that redefine dread for a new age.
Jordan Peele
The filmmaker behind Get Out has created pointed allegories exploring the dangers, nuances, and contradictions of Black existence in the America. His effect is clear from the multitude of followers, with the finest of them guided by Peele himself via his Monkeypaw.
Robert Eggers
A skilled excavator of the least known recesses of the bygone eras, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in finding the foreign aspects of past epochs and showing them devoid of contemporary alteration. Eggers' unholy time machines unlock gateways to madness, longing, and transformation.
Voice of a Generation
The millennial director with their finger most in touch with the younger spirit, as aware of the solitudes, and deep connections, of an digitally-obsessed time. Channeling concepts of connection and popular media via gender transition and the legacy of physical terror, creations such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the eeriest fractures of the psyche.
Damien Leone
Leone’s series of Terrifier features is this decade's major horror achievement, proof that audience buzz can still produce bona fide hits from well-executed low-budget violence. Beyond the new horror villain, insane figure Art the Clown is evidence that the viewers' thirst for blood – excessive, hilarious, unrestrained – remains insatiable.
Blurrer of Realities
Blurring the line between delusion and the real world, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has assembled a portfolio of intense women pushed to extremes by the strength of their devotion to distorted values. Prone to imaginative climaxes that question simple readings into suspicion, her movies remain – though less like a pebble in your shoe than a sharp object in your foot.
Danny and Michael Philippou
From the early beginnings of YouTube arose a pair of filmmakers conquering the film industry with a trendy style of shock. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they presented violent spectacles in between realistic portrayals of how today’s teenagers think. Cinema enthusiasts pray to them as if they’re recently made icons.
Julia Ducournau
The director's sleek, metaphor-forward fusion of scary movie conventions with arthouse flourishes earned her a Palme d’Or, the historic moment the festival gave its highest honor to a scary film. Holding the viscera-flecked flag of the New French Extremity, the Titane filmmaker indulges the cravings of the disconnected to spectacular outcome.
Na Hong-jin
Among the most thrilling artists to come forth from Asia in the past decade, the South Korean director has directed one jewel of folk horror (The Wailing) and co-written one more (The Medium). Paced with total assurance and exact tonal control, his movies converts mainstream formulas into frightful, unique shapes.
These eight filmmakers signify the diverse and groundbreaking future of the horror genre, propelling the boundaries of terror into new territories.