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Within the realm of contemporary cinema, a fresh wave of visionaries is expanding the boundaries of the scary movie category. Ranging from social commentaries to visceral thrillers, these 8 directors are creating lasting journeys that redefine fear for a new age.

The Mind Behind Get Out

The director behind Get Out has developed sharp symbolic tales delving into the risks, complexities, and paradoxes of Black life in the US. His effect is clear from the abundance of copycats, with the best within them guided by the filmmaker by way of his Monkeypaw.

Robert Eggers

A masterful excavator of the most obscure pockets of the past, this creator of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu excels in finding the foreign facets of distant history and depicting them without contemporary reinterpretation. His dark journeys into the past open portals to madness, craving, and elevation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The millennial filmmaker with their focus closest to the younger heartbeat, as aware of the solitudes, and significant relationships, of an digitally-obsessed age. Filtering themes of bonding and mainstream entertainment through trans identity and the tradition of body horror, creations such as I Saw the TV Glow plumb the most unsettling cracks of the identity.

Gore Maestro

Leone’s three-part saga of Terrifier films is this decade's major scary movie achievement, proof that fan support can still produce genuine successes from skillfully made small-scale gore. More than the next slasher icon, psychotic poster boy Art the Clown is evidence that the audience's thirst for gore – gratuitous, comical, unchecked – remains insatiable.

Blurrer of Realities

Merging the line between fantasy and the real world, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, Glass has assembled a portfolio of powerful female characters compelled to extremes by the depth of their devotion to warped values. Known for surreal climaxes that question easy understandings into question, her movies linger – though less like a stone in your footwear than a nail in your foot.

YouTube Sensations

Emerging from the early beginnings of digital platform came a team of siblings taking over the cinema landscape with a current type of provocation. With their movies Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they created shocking displays in between realistic depictions of how modern teenagers act. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re recently made heroes.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

Her polished, metaphor-forward fusion of scary movie conventions with arthouse styles gained her a Palme d’Or, the initial instance the Cannes Film Festival gave its top prize to a scary film. Holding the gore-stained flag of the extreme cinema wave, the Titane filmmaker explores the desires of the alienated to stunning effect.

Asian Horror Visionary

Among the most intriguing filmmakers to emerge from Asia in recent years, the South Korean filmmaker has made one gem of mythical fear (The Wailing) and co-scripted one more (The Medium). Paced with absolute confidence and exact atmosphere crafting, his films transposes conventional structures into horrifying, novel styles.

These eight filmmakers embody the varied and creative future of horror, propelling the boundaries of terror into fresh realms.