Fright club: eight film-makers who are redefining modern horror

"The Get Out director's spring-loaded allegories for the perils, nuances and contradictions of Black life in the US have spawned a new cinematic vocabulary; you can judge his influence by the sheer number of imitators, the best of them nurtured by Peele himself through his Monkeypaw production company. Watch on Netflix"

"An expert excavator of the most obscure pockets of the past, this director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and Nosferatu excels in finding the foreign facets of distant history and presenting them without modern-day revisionism. His unholy time machines open portals to madness, desire and transcendence. Watch on Prime Video"

"The millennial film-maker with their finger closest to the generation's pulse, as attuned to the solitudes, and meaningful bonds, of an internet-besotted age. Filtering themes of connection and pop culture through trans identity and the tradition of body horror, works such as I Saw the TV Glow plumb the eeriest fissures of the self. Watch on Prime Video"

"Leone's trilogy of Terrifier films is this century's great horror success story, evidence that word of mouth can still create bona fide hits from well-executed microbudget gore. More than the next Jason or Freddy, psychotic poster boy Art the Clown is proof that the public's thirst for blood gratuitous, hilarious, unbridled remains unslakable. Watch on Paramount+"

Contemporary horror spans allegorical examinations of race, meticulous historical recreations, internet-era intimate body horror, microbudget gore phenomena, and intense psychospiritual portraits of driven women. Allegorical works about Black life have created a distinct cinematic vocabulary and fostered imitators supported by production hubs. Historical horror directors excavate obscure pasts and present them without modern revisionism, generating unsettling portals to madness, desire and transcendence. Millennial filmmakers explore solitude, connection and trans identity through pop-culture-infused body horror to reveal fissures of the self. Microbudget franchises prove word-of-mouth can yield major hits and satisfy cravings for brutal, darkly comic violence.

Read at www.theguardian.com