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Across the landscape of current filmmaking, a fresh cohort of creators is stretching the boundaries of the horror film style. From societal metaphors to graphic fright-fests, these eight directors are crafting lasting journeys that redefine dread for a current age.

The Mind Behind Get Out

The filmmaker behind Get Out has crafted pointed symbolic tales exploring the dangers, complexities, and paradoxes of Black life in the United States. Peele's impact is clear from the multitude of imitators, with the finest within them nurtured by the filmmaker through his Monkeypaw.

Robert Eggers

An expert excavator of the darkest corners of the bygone eras, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu is known for uncovering the foreign elements of past epochs and presenting them free from modern-day reinterpretation. Eggers' dark time machines create doorways to madness, longing, and transcendence.

Jane Schoenbrun

The contemporary creator with their finger most attuned to the millennial heartbeat, as attuned to the loneliness, and significant relationships, of an internet-besotted era. Weaving ideas of bonding and popular media through gender transition and the legacy of body horror, works such as I Saw the TV Glow plumb the strangest fissures of the self.

Damien Leone

Leone’s series of Terrifier movies is this decade's great horror achievement, evidence that audience buzz can still generate true blockbusters from expertly crafted small-scale gore. Not just the new slasher icon, deranged figure Art the Clown is evidence that the viewers' craving for blood – gratuitous, hilarious, unbridled – remains endless.

Blurrer of Realities

Obscuring the boundary between fantasy and reality, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has created a gallery of powerful female characters driven to limits by the depth of their devotion to twisted values. Prone to surreal climaxes that question easy interpretations into suspicion, her films stay with you – though less like a rock in your shoe than a sharp object in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

Emerging from the early beginnings of online video arrived a duo of siblings dominating the cinema landscape with a current brand of shock. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged violent spectacles in between authentic portrayals of how today’s teenagers behave. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re newly declared icons.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

The director's sleek, allegory-driven blend of genre trappings with independent flourishes gained her a prestigious award, the first time the festival gave its top prize to a scary film. Carrying the gore-stained flag of the extreme cinema wave, the Titane creator delves into the cravings of the isolated to spectacular outcome.

Asian Horror Visionary

Among the most exciting talents to arise from Asia in recent years, the Korean director has made one gem of folk horror (The Wailing) and co-scripted one more (The Medium). Arranged with absolute confidence and exact atmosphere crafting, his work converts mainstream formulas into terrifying, original styles.

These eight directors represent the varied and innovative future of scary cinema, driving the limits of dread into new territories.