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Across the world of contemporary filmmaking, a new cohort of creators is stretching the boundaries of the horror category. Ranging from societal allegories to intense chillers, these eight filmmakers are crafting memorable experiences that redefine dread for a modern age.

Jordan Peele

The director behind Get Out has crafted spring-loaded symbolic tales exploring the dangers, subtleties, and paradoxes of Black life in the US. Peele's impact is clear from the multitude of copycats, with the best within them supported by the filmmaker via his production company.

Master of Historical Horror

A skilled explorer of the most obscure corners of the history, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in finding the alien facets of historical periods and depicting them free from contemporary reinterpretation. Eggers' dark time machines create doorways to madness, craving, and elevation.

Voice of a Generation

The millennial filmmaker with their focus closest to the younger spirit, as sensitive to the solitudes, and deep connections, of an internet-besotted time. Filtering concepts of bonding and popular media via gender transition and the legacy of physical terror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the strangest fissures of the psyche.

Damien Leone

The director's trilogy of Terrifier features is this decade's major horror success story, testament that fan support can still produce true hits from well-executed microbudget violence. Not just the next slasher icon, insane icon Art the Clown is confirmation that the public’s craving for gore – over-the-top, hilarious, unchecked – remains unslakable.

Blurrer of Realities

Obscuring the line between delusion and actuality, with her movies Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has created a portfolio of intense female characters pushed to the edge by the depth of their commitment to warped values. Given to fantastical endings that call simple understandings into question, her works stay with you – though not so much like a stone in your shoe than a spike in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the early beginnings of online video came a duo of siblings conquering the film industry with a zeitgeisty type of provocation. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged atrocity exhibitions in between realistic portrayals of how current young people act. Film students look up to them as if they’re recently made icons.

Julia Ducournau

Her sleek, symbolism-rich combination of horror elements with arthouse flourishes earned her a Palme d’Or, the historic moment the festival presented its top prize to a scary film. Carrying the blood-soaked banner of the New French Extremity, the Titane filmmaker indulges the cravings of the disconnected to remarkable effect.

Asian Horror Visionary

A member of the most thrilling filmmakers to arise from Eastern cinema in modern times, the South Korean director has crafted one masterpiece of traditional terror (The Wailing) and co-written another (The Medium). Arranged with supreme certainty and exact atmosphere crafting, his movies transforms mainstream formulas into frightful, original forms.

These filmmakers represent the varied and creative direction of horror, propelling the edges of terror into fresh dimensions.