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Across the world of modern filmmaking, a fresh generation of artists is stretching the limits of the horror film category. Ranging from cultural commentaries to visceral thrillers, these eight filmmakers are crafting memorable journeys that reimagine terror for a modern generation.

Jordan Peele

The creator behind Get Out has developed pointed metaphors delving into the risks, subtleties, and conflicts of Black life in the America. Peele's effect is evident from the abundance of copycats, with the finest within them nurtured by the director by way of his Monkeypaw.

Robert Eggers

An expert explorer of the darkest pockets of the bygone eras, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu excels in finding the foreign facets of past epochs and showing them without modern-day revisionism. His dark journeys into the past unlock gateways to insanity, craving, and transcendence.

Jane Schoenbrun

The modern filmmaker with their finger most in touch with the younger pulse, as sensitive to the isolation, and meaningful bonds, of an internet-besotted time. Weaving themes of connection and mainstream entertainment by way of trans experiences and the legacy of body horror, films such as I Saw the TV Glow delve into the eeriest cracks of the psyche.

Damien Leone

Leone’s three-part saga of Terrifier movies is this era's significant horror achievement, proof that word of mouth can still produce genuine successes from skillfully made small-scale violence. Not just the next Jason or Freddy, psychotic poster boy Art the Clown is proof that the audience's craving for violence – gratuitous, hilarious, unrestrained – remains unslakable.

Rose Glass

Obscuring the division between delusion and actuality, with her films Saint Maud and Love Lies Bleeding, The director has assembled a portfolio of intense protagonists pushed to extremes by the depth of their commitment to twisted ideals. Prone to fantastical grand finales that question straightforward understandings into suspicion, her movies linger – though not so much like a pebble in your footwear than a sharp object in your foot.

Danny and Michael Philippou

From the early beginnings of YouTube came a team of filmmakers dominating the cinema landscape with a current type of controversy. With their films Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, they staged violent spectacles in between authentic portrayals of how modern youth act. Aspiring directors look up to them as if they’re freshly canonised saints.

Julia Ducournau

The director's sleek, symbolism-rich combination of scary movie conventions with art film touches gained her a prestigious award, the first time the festival awarded its premier award to a terror movie. Carrying the gore-stained flag of the French horror movement, the Titane director delves into the appetites of the alienated to remarkable result.

Na Hong-jin

Among the most exciting filmmakers to emerge from the Asian continent in modern times, the South Korean creator has made one jewel of traditional terror (The Wailing) and co-written one more (The Medium). Paced with supreme assurance and meticulous tonal control, his movies transforms conventional structures into horrifying, unique shapes.

The listed filmmakers embody the wide-ranging and creative future of horror, propelling the limits of terror into unexplored realms.