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Across the world of contemporary cinema, a fresh cohort of creators is stretching the limits of the scary movie category. Ranging from social metaphors to intense chillers, these eight directors are crafting memorable adventures that redefine dread for a modern age.

The Mind Behind Get Out

The filmmaker of Get Out has created spring-loaded symbolic tales exploring the risks, nuances, and contradictions of Black existence in the America. His influence is obvious from the sheer number of followers, with the top of them supported by Peele himself via his production company.

Robert Eggers

An expert explorer of the most obscure corners of the bygone eras, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in finding the foreign aspects of distant history and depicting them without present-day reinterpretation. Eggers' sinister historical explorations open portals to insanity, desire, and transformation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The modern creator with their finger most attuned to the millennial pulse, as aware of the loneliness, and significant relationships, of an internet-besotted time. Weaving themes of relationships and pop culture by way of trans experiences and the tradition of physical terror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow plumb the strangest cracks of the psyche.

Gore Maestro

Leone’s three-part saga of Terrifier films is this era's great scary movie success story, evidence that word of mouth can still create genuine successes from skillfully made small-scale violence. Not just the modern slasher icon, deranged figure Art the Clown is confirmation that the audience's desire for blood – excessive, hilarious, unbridled – remains insatiable.

Blurrer of Realities

Merging the division between hallucination and actuality, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, Glass has built a collection of driven female characters pushed to extremes by the depth of their dedication to distorted beliefs. Prone to imaginative climaxes that challenge easy understandings into doubt, her works remain – though less like a pebble in your footwear than a spike in your sole.

Danny and Michael Philippou

Emerging from the humble origins of YouTube came a pair of filmmakers dominating the film industry with a trendy type of provocation. With their works Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged atrocity exhibitions in between realistic depictions of how today’s young people behave. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re newly canonised icons.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

Her sleek, symbolism-rich combination of scary movie conventions with arthouse flourishes gained her a Palme d’Or, the initial instance the event awarded its premier award to a terror movie. Bearing the viscera-flecked standard of the New French Extremity, the Titane creator delves into the appetites of the disconnected to remarkable result.

Na Hong-jin

A member of the most thrilling artists to emerge from Asia in recent years, the Seoul-based filmmaker has crafted one gem of traditional terror (The Wailing) and collaborated on a second one (The Medium). Arranged with total certainty and precise tonal control, his movies transposes mainstream formulas into horrifying, novel styles.

The listed directors represent the wide-ranging and creative direction of the horror genre, driving the boundaries of fear into new realms.