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Across the realm of contemporary cinema, a new wave of creators is stretching the boundaries of the horror style. From social allegories to visceral chillers, these 8 directors are producing unforgettable experiences that reshape fear for a current age.

Jordan Peele

The creator of Get Out has developed pointed metaphors delving into the risks, subtleties, and conflicts of African American experience in the US. His effect is clear from the sheer number of copycats, with the finest of them guided by the filmmaker through his Monkeypaw.

Robert Eggers

A masterful excavator of the darkest recesses of the bygone eras, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in uncovering the foreign facets of past epochs and showing them without present-day reinterpretation. Eggers' sinister time machines open portals to madness, craving, and elevation.

Jane Schoenbrun

The modern filmmaker with their pulse most in touch with the millennial spirit, as attuned to the loneliness, and significant relationships, of an digitally-obsessed era. Weaving themes of connection and pop culture by way of gender transition and the tradition of corporeal fear, creations such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the strangest fissures of the self.

Damien Leone

Leone’s three-part saga of Terrifier features is this century’s significant scary movie success story, testament that fan support can still generate true blockbusters from well-executed small-scale bloodshed. More than the modern horror villain, psychotic icon Art the Clown is proof that the audience's desire for violence – gratuitous, humorous, unbridled – remains endless.

Rose Glass

Obscuring the boundary between hallucination and the real world, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, Glass has created a collection of intense female characters pushed to extremes by the strength of their commitment to warped ideals. Known for imaginative grand finales that call easy understandings into suspicion, her works remain – though not so much like a stone in your shoe than a sharp object in your foot.

YouTube Sensations

Emerging from the humble origins of digital platform came a team of brothers taking over the world with a trendy brand of provocation. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged atrocity exhibitions in between credible portrayals of how today’s young people act. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re recently made heroes.

Julia Ducournau

Her refined, symbolism-rich combination of genre trappings with arthouse flourishes won her a Palme d’Or, the initial instance the festival gave its premier award to a terror movie. Carrying the viscera-flecked banner of the French horror movement, the Titane director delves into the cravings of the isolated to remarkable outcome.

Na Hong-jin

A member of the most thrilling filmmakers to arise from Asia in modern times, the Seoul-based creator has directed one masterpiece of traditional terror (The Wailing) and co-scripted another (The Medium). Paced with supreme assurance and exact atmosphere crafting, his work converts conventional structures into frightful, novel forms.

The listed filmmakers signify the wide-ranging and creative future of horror, pushing the limits of terror into new territories.