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Across the world of current filmmaking, a fresh cohort of visionaries is stretching the edges of the horror film style. From social commentaries to intense chillers, these 8 movie-makers are producing memorable experiences that reimagine terror for a modern generation.

The Mind Behind Get Out

The director behind Get Out has developed spring-loaded allegories exploring the risks, subtleties, and paradoxes of African American experience in the US. Peele's impact is clear from the multitude of imitators, with the top within them nurtured by Peele himself by way of his production company.

Robert Eggers

An expert explorer of the most obscure pockets of the history, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu specializes in revealing the unfamiliar aspects of distant history and presenting them devoid of present-day reinterpretation. Eggers' sinister time machines open portals to psychosis, craving, and transcendence.

Jane Schoenbrun

The millennial filmmaker with their finger closest to the generation’s spirit, as attuned to the loneliness, and significant relationships, of an online-focused age. Filtering ideas of connection and mainstream entertainment by way of trans experiences and the history of physical terror, works such as I Saw the TV Glow explore the eeriest cracks of the identity.

Damien Leone

The director's series of Terrifier features is this century’s significant horror success story, evidence that word of mouth can still generate bona fide blockbusters from skillfully made small-scale violence. Beyond the next slasher icon, psychotic poster boy Art the Clown is confirmation that the viewers' desire for blood – over-the-top, comical, unbridled – remains insatiable.

Blurrer of Realities

Blurring the division between fantasy and the real world, with her works Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has built a gallery of intense female characters pushed to limits by the intensity of their commitment to twisted beliefs. Given to fantastical climaxes that question straightforward readings into suspicion, her movies linger – though not so much like a pebble in your shoe than a nail in your sole.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the early beginnings of online video came a team of brothers dominating the film industry with a zeitgeisty style of shock. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they created atrocity exhibitions in between authentic depictions of how modern young people behave. Film students idolize them as if they’re recently canonised saints.

Arthouse Horror Pioneer

The director's refined, metaphor-forward combination of horror elements with art film flourishes won her a top Cannes prize, the historic moment the event gave its premier award to a scary film. Holding the gore-stained standard of the extreme cinema wave, the Titane filmmaker indulges the desires of the disconnected to remarkable outcome.

Asian Horror Visionary

A member of the most thrilling artists to come forth from the Asian continent in modern times, the Korean creator has crafted one masterpiece of mythical fear (The Wailing) and co-scripted another (The Medium). Arranged with supreme assurance and precise tonal control, his work transposes Hollywood templates into terrifying, novel forms.

These directors signify the diverse and groundbreaking direction of the horror genre, pushing the limits of fear into fresh dimensions.