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Across the landscape of modern movie-making, a fresh cohort of artists is expanding the limits of the horror film category. From societal metaphors to intense chillers, these 8 movie-makers are creating unforgettable experiences that reshape dread for a modern age.

The Mind Behind Get Out

The filmmaker of Get Out has developed pointed metaphors examining the risks, complexities, and conflicts of Black life in the US. His influence is evident from the multitude of imitators, with the finest of them nurtured by the director through his Monkeypaw.

Robert Eggers

A masterful explorer of the darkest corners of the past, this filmmaker of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu is known for revealing the alien elements of past epochs and presenting them devoid of present-day reinterpretation. His sinister historical explorations create doorways to madness, craving, and transcendence.

Voice of a Generation

The contemporary filmmaker with their finger most attuned to the generation’s heartbeat, as attuned to the solitudes, and significant relationships, of an internet-besotted time. Filtering ideas of bonding and popular media via gender transition and the tradition of body horror, creations such as I Saw the TV Glow delve into the strangest fractures of the psyche.

Damien Leone

The director's series of Terrifier films is this era's great scary movie triumph, evidence that audience buzz can still create true blockbusters from skillfully made microbudget bloodshed. Not just the modern horror villain, insane figure Art the Clown is confirmation that the viewers' desire for gore – excessive, hilarious, unbridled – remains endless.

Rose Glass

Blurring the division between hallucination and reality, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has built a gallery of driven female characters compelled to the edge by the intensity of their devotion to warped values. Given to surreal endings that question easy readings into question, her films remain – though less like a stone in your footwear than a nail in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the primordial ooze of online video came a duo of brothers dominating the film industry with a current type of provocation. With their movies Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they presented violent spectacles in between authentic depictions of how current young people act. Film students look up to them as if they’re freshly canonised icons.

Julia Ducournau

Her refined, allegory-driven fusion of scary movie conventions with arthouse flourishes earned her a Palme d’Or, the initial instance the event presented its premier award to a terror movie. Holding the blood-soaked standard of the French horror movement, the Titane director explores the cravings of the isolated to stunning result.

Na Hong-jin

Among the most thrilling talents to come forth from Asia in recent years, the Korean filmmaker has crafted one jewel of mythical fear (The Wailing) and collaborated on one more (The Medium). Paced with absolute certainty and exact atmosphere crafting, his films transforms conventional structures into horrifying, novel shapes.

These filmmakers represent the varied and groundbreaking future of horror, propelling the edges of terror into new dimensions.