Top Genre Filmmakers of 2026: From Curry Barker to Guillermo del Toro

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Cronin broke out with 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, which grossed $147 million globally. A favorite of Jason Blum and James Wan, he got the name-brand treatment with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, another solid performer this year that made audiences uncomfortable with its body horror.

The movie my parents didn’t let me watch: “Trainspotting. Because of the drug use. Little did they know I had split the signal from the VHS player, so when they watched it downstairs, I also watched it on my 14-inch portable TV in my bedroom.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “The karaoke scene in Project Hail Mary. That entire film blew my mind,and I’d love to see it win best picture. That scene in particular was so simple and human amongst the rest of the wonderful spectacle.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Worrying about the next day.”

The prop I took home without permission was: “A tiny ashtray from the police station in The Mummy. A 1970s wooden one. I also have the sarcophagus in the hallway of my house, but that was way harder to steal.”

The Conjuring: Last Rites

Chaves is a tried-and-true hand who propelled the Conjuring universe to increasingly bigger box office heights, from 2019’s The Curse of La Llorona to the nearly $500 million-grossing The Conjuring: Last Rites. Next up, he steps out of the house that James Wan built to take on Yeti, a survival horror film starring Chris Pine as a father who must protect his daughter from a monster after an avalanche.

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up: “My dad wouldn’t let me see anything and my mom basically let me see everything. (The main benefit of divorced parents.)”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “Obsession — calling customer support for the wish gone wrong. Just the idea is so funny and weird – but the moment where she screams — it’s so unsettling. Curry, you’re a master.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Playing XBOX.”

The prop I took home without permission was: “All of them. My favorite is the mirror from Conjuring: Last Rites. But I think the studio knew about it so not sure it really counts.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “Bring back James Wan. Both in a test screening and on my Instagram. Thanks guys.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “From James Wan: Be bold.”

The Other Mommy

Savage graduated from the found-footage genre with The Boogeyman in 2023 and is poised for a potential hit with The Other Mommy, whose trailer has audiences jumping out of their seats. It stars Jessica Chastain in dual roles — as both a mother to a young girl and her sinister doppelgänger.

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up: “Any of them. My parents originally tried to raise me with no TV in the house, a plan that entirely backfired. Once they relented, my dad would often speak in a hushed voice about The Exorcist and The Silence of the Lambs. Him describing scenes from those forbidden movies was so much more disturbing than finally watching them many years later.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “The First Omen by Arkasha Stevenson is the best directing I’ve seen in a genre movie in the last five years. It’s classy and sophisticated – two traits that I sorely lack – while maintaining a level of blunt-force horror I can’t believe she pulled off in a studio tentpole (the hand!!). People slept on this one, but I guarantee we’ll be revisiting and reappraising for years to come.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “As a young filmmaker, I was lucky enough to spend some time with Herbert Wise, who directed the incomparable I, Claudius. He told me that whenever I was unsure of something—what the next shot should be, for instance—I should pretend that I knew exactly what I wanted and tell the crew to start setting up. That, he said, was the director’s opportunity to disappear for a moment and work out what the real shot should be. Then I could return to the crew, claim I’d had a breakthrough, and tell them to set up the new shot instead. That way, the crew never saw him uncertain; instead, they saw his enthusiasm and could ride that energy when he returned with an epiphany.”

The prop I took home without permission was: “On Boogeyman, in order to have a lighting reference on set, we created a mounted Boogeyman head that was fully painted and textured. It was awesome and I had my eye on it from day one. When we wrapped I hid in the studio with my assistant and we ransacked the place. I stole a whole box worth of props, topped off with my coveted Boogey head. A few months later, I was doing final ADR with the young child star Vivian Lyra Blair and she was too scared to look at the screen after catching a glimpse of the creature. I decided to give her the Boogey head so that she could get used to him before of the premiere. I think it’s still mounted on her wall like a hunting trophy.”

Hope

The Korean maestro built an international fan base of art house devotees and action junkies, directing the crime thrillers The Chaser and The Yellow Sea and the 2016 horror hit The Wailing. Now his first film in a decade also is the first to get a major U.S. push, with Neon backing the creature feature Hope (Sept. 9), about small-town law enforcement hunting a giant monster running amok.

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was: “At the time, there were legal restrictions on Japanese culture entering Korea. As I remember it, the only movies my parents ever tried to keep me from watching were Japanese films circulating as illegal bootlegs. I was a fan of Kinji Fukasaku’s films.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “I stretch and go to the sauna. After dinner, I listen to music.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was… “This happened at a screening of The Yellow Sea in a provincial city in southeastern Korea. Just before the film ended, everyone was quietly watching the long take of the dead protagonist being abandoned in the dark sea. Suddenly, I heard someone applauding boldly. I looked over and saw a tough-looking middle-aged man, his face flushed and his belly sticking out. He stood up alone and kept applauding, shouting loudly in his regional dialect, ‘What a movie! It’s chijeong! Chijeong!’¹ Of everything I’ve seen in my life, that scene has stuck with me the most. For context, audiences in Korea generally don’t stand up and applaud or cheer in movie theaters.”

¹ Chijeong (치정) refers to obsessive or destructive romantic/sexual passion or entanglement, often involving jealousy or infidelity. There is no exact English equivalent.

The Black Phone 2, The Gorge

Derrickson, who launched the Sinister movies in 2011 and directed Marvel’s first Doctor Strange film, had two features released last year.The Gorge, a $100 million-plus monster movie starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller, became Apple TV’s most watched movie in 2025. And he returned to supernatural horror with The Black Phone 2, which earned a tidy profit for Universal and Blumhouse. 

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was: “Non-existant. I saw everything. I saw Death Race 2000 at the drive-in when I was 9. But R-rated films were always at the drive-in, so when extreme violence or sex came on screen, my dad would say, ‘Down — get down,’ and me, my brother and my sister in the back seat would have to duck down. We’d hear terror screams or ecstatic moaning. I remember trying to imagine what was happening on screen.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “The ending chase sequence in Weapons. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It was tonally so courageous, and the audience was eating it up.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind with: “A bowl of popcorn and a comedy episode if I’m happy with what I got. If not, maybe a bourbon and an episode of true crime.”

·The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “Cut the entire beatific vision from the end of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I said I would quit before I would do it. It ended up being the poster.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “If you’re shooting a traditional master with coverage, don’t shoot the coverage until the master works on its own. Until the master works, you don’t have the scene.”

The prop I took home without permission: “The Eye of Agamotto from Doctor Strange.”

The Substance

Fargeat is an auteur with a capital A. She doesn’t make much, but what she does make is 100 percent her vision — from writing and directing to editing. The Substance was one of the best body horror movies of all time and landed her screenplay, directing and best picture Oscar noms.

X trilogy, Ebenezer

A longtime horror practitioner, West found newfound heights thanks to this decade’s X, Pearl, MaXXXine trifecta. In the fall, he has the fate of Johnny Depp’s big studio return in his hands with Paramount’s Ebenezer, which also marks the filmmaker’s own big studio debut. 

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was: “Faces of Death.”

The prop I took without permission: “Jacob Marley’s pocket watch.”

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

During the past five years, Schoenbrun has unleashed films that are not quite like anything out there, using the horror lens to explore queer identity. Schoenbrun, who transitioned as they were writing the 2024 Sundance darling I Saw the TV Glow, is back with the Cannes title Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a riff on both Hollywood machinery as well as slasher genre.

The movie my parents didn’t let me watch: “In & Out starring Kevin Kline.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “The end of Chronovisor.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Jem Cohen movies on criterion channel.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “We need to see them have really bad sex before we see them have good sex.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “Be kind.”

The prop I took home without permission was: “Does seltzer from crafty count?”

Strange Darling

All it takes is one great flick to make a career. That’s what the disorienting and pulpy 2024 serial killer movie Strange Darling did for Mollner. The modestly budgeted film was not a box office smash, grossing just $4.8 million, but was a major hit with critics and Hollywood. He’s now working his next project, the horror-tinged Skeletons, starring Brie  Larson and produced by J.J. Abrams for Sony.  

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up: “Goodfellas, but I found a way.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “Just about every scene in Julia Ducournau’s new movie, Alpha.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Going to the cinema, reading fiction, or, in serious cases, whisky.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “The most constructive note I ever received was ‘Make it shorter.’  The silliest note I ever received was ‘Make it look less like Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “There’s nothing that exceeds the importance of casting.”

The prop I took home without permission was: “I’ll never tell.”

Whalefall

Astonishingly, the ambitious, out-there Whalefall — an adaptation of Daniel Kraus’ novel about a man swallowed by a sperm whale — will be Duffield’s first movie in theaters after his mostly dialogue-free alien invasion movie No One Will Save You became a surprise hit on Hulu, and his cult favorite Spontaneous was sent to VOD in 2020 amid the pandemic. But he’s felt omnipresent in the genre scene for years as the dependable writer of The Babysitter, Love and Monsters and the upcoming J.T. Mollner feature Skeletons. He’s also writing Gen Z meme obsession Siren Head with Zach Cregger.

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was: “The Lost World: Jurassic Park, despite being a huge Jurassic Park freak. So I wrote my fanfiction versions of what the movie could be, which evolved into screenwriting, which goes to show that parents should just show their kids everything.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “I haven’t seen much this year but all of the ghost scenes in Mother Mary by David Lowery knocked me out. And also am furiously jealous of those two performances he got. And of the rest of the movie. Screw that guy.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Regretting all of the choices I made that led me to that day, and then try to remember that tomorrow will be better, or at least different. And drinking a lot of NyQuil.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “To be more protective of the movie than of my plans for the movie.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “Working with people you enjoy being around makes every day so much easier.”

The prop I took without permission: “I have an entire storage unit of weird whale and squid stuff now.”

Onslaught

After spending the first half of this decade on Legendary’s big-budget Godzilla and Kong movies, Wingard is back to the kind of visceral minimalism that earned him comparisons to John Carpenter. His gonzo action movie Onslaught opens Sept. 5 (review on page 69) and, in a testament to his growing power, is the first movie on which he enjoyed the privilege of final cut. 

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up: “Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom. I still have to look away during that bug sequence and the banquet scene, so they were probably right to do so.”

A recent movie scene i’m jealous i didn’t direct: “The final five minutes or so of Eddington.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Cooking bolognese or chili while drinking wine is my favorite way to decompress. For some reason, I tend to get a surge of energy after a long shoot day. I especially love doing this at 5:00 a.m. after a night shoot.”

Predator: Badlands, Predator: Killer of Killers

Trachtenberg is the undisputed king of using IP to tell personal stories, first with the abduction thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane but most notably with Prey, Predator: Killer of Killers and Predator: Badlands, three wildly different movies that made a worn-out franchise relevant. It’s the kind of skill both creative and business execs salivate over, which is why the IP-hungry Paramount swooped in with a first-look. 

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up: “I felt like I was the last kid in my school that was allowed to watch R rated movies. But I found a loophole…the soundtracks. The first cassette tapes I ever purchased were the soundtracks to Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4 and Rambo 3. I’d listen to that Rambo score over and over, imagining my own little movie. Thanks mom!”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Playing video games. Usually leveling an MMO. More likely than not it will be World of Warcraft Classic and Retail on loop. But I hop between LOTRO, WOW, FF14, GW2…there’s no acronym I won’t play.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie: “On 10 Cloverfield Lane, JJ [Abrams] urged some very precise reshoots. Notably, for the scene where the infected woman shows up at  the door – which, whenever we screened, was getting the biggest crowd reaction – but it was short and simple and…it could be better. At the time I had seen it as a sign of failure, that I had gotten something wrong. But I quickly learned while sometimes reshoots are about fixing something – they can also be used to turn good moments into great ones.”

The best advice I got about directing: “Get them to nod their head. Originally was advice on how to pitch something from an idea to a methodology. Get them to slowly agree with each smaller concept to eventually get ‘em to see the big one. But I also think it’s advice on what to make as it is on how to make it. We all just want to see something that has us nodding our heads, seeing a reflection of how we feel up on screen in some form.”

Talk to Me, Bring Her Back

Before Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, the Philippou brothers proved the internet could give you the chops to make a real-deal movie. They graduated from their YouTube channel RackaRacka to Talk to Me, a massive hit and big sale out of Sundance 2023 that earned $92 million on a $4.5 million budget for A24. Even if the follow-up, Bring Her Back, was just a modest success, they are still near the top of studio heads’ wish lists.

Movie our parents didn’t let us see: “Our mum barely let [us] watch anything. That’s what made watching everything so rebellious and exciting.”

The recent scene we are jealous we didn’t direct: “There’s a moment in Hamnet when Jessie Buckley swings at Paul Mescal’s face and he barely dodges it. I love it when performers are that comfortable and raw with each other. It felt so real. The tension was palpable.”

How we unwind:  “SCREAM SINGING to tunes all the way home.”

The Life of Chuck, The Exorcist: Martyrs

Hollywood’s definitive Stephen King whisperer has been entrusted with numerous properties from the great- est horror author of our time, from the films Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep and Life of Chuck to the upcoming TV show Carrie. Now he’s tackling perhaps the biggest challenge of his career, revamp- ing the Exorcist franchise with Scarlett Johansson for Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Universal.

The prop I took home without permission: “I’m a prop collector, so I respectfully decline to answer this question on the advice of counsel.”

The Hunger Games, The Long Walk

Have a Hunger Games book you need adapted? Lawrence is your guy. He’s able to handle the spectacle and the character development. (His Sunrise on the Reaping arrives Nov. 20.) But he isn’t afraid to branch out, as seen with last year’s well-regarded lo-fi adaptation of Stephen King’s gritty The Long Walk.

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was: “Saturday Night Fever… I watched A Clockwork Orange instead – without my parents knowing.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “Pretty much any scene in Dune 2. I was truly moved by the absolute perfection of the filmmaking.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “A Vesper martini.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “The worst notes come when the movie is already finished and there’s nothing I can do about it anymore.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “Honestly, I have been lucky enough to have met with and have been supported by a few very talented, veteran filmmakers whom I respect immensely. They’ve all generously shared advice and stories. All are such different people with different approaches… so for me the best advice has been how I’ve navigated the lessons they taught me and have chosen how those lessons intersect with who I am as a person and a how I work.”

The prop I took home without permission was: “The best prop I have (but was not taken without permission) is the Holy Shotgun from Constantine. Was given to me by Keanu [Reeves] at wrap. “

Longlegs, The Monkey

Perkins became a name-brand director thanks to Longlegs, the $127 million grosser that now has a bigger-budget sequel in the works at Lionsgate. He’s kept the momentum up, putting out two movies in 2025 (The Monkey, Keeper) and has another in post. Having a hand in one of the biggest titles of the year as a producer of Backrooms only cements his status as one of the more influential people working in the space.

The movie my parents wouldn’t let me watch: “I was almost never forbidden from entering the living room at my childhood home when the TV was going to be turned on, except for maybe once in my memory, when my parents were planning to watch Blue Velvet. I had never heard of it, but I had certainly heard of National Velvet and so, by default, assumed they meant National Velvet which then led my mind to an image of the side of a horse’s neck, only from horse-shoulder to horse-jaw, muscular and sleek-shiny and. . . dark blue? And you can imagine my surprise [or, rather, my satisfaction], later upon seeing Lynch’s masterpiece, when the deep blue velvet curtains, looked at from a certain angle, or perhaps viewed with one eye covered, were not exactly un-horse hairlike.”

The prop I took home without permission was: “I don’t steal props from myself. I might be in possession of an occasionally depraved mind, but there are limits. I do legally own one of the FBI cars featured in Longlegs [a 1990 Crown Vic that still “bleeds” sticky stage blood from its AC vents after Agent Browning was pretend-shotgunned in its driver’s seat] but I did not require a crowbar to acquire the vehicle in question; I merely asked my producers for the keys. That all said, in 9th grade, I did a report on special effects makeup and, as a result of my father’s [Psycho actor Anthony Perkins] celebrity and my mother’s desire to provide, was somehow ‘given’ two severed heads from April Fool’s Day to present as exhibits. No doubt I was meant to return them after the report was turned in and graded. But that never happened. I did, however, use them relentlessly in home movies made on weekends with my friends; countless VHS decapitations were made passable thanks to these high-quality foam and rubber cabbages. To repeat: no doubt I was meant to return them. To repeat: I never did.”

Godzilla Minus Zero

His $10 million feature Godzilla Minus One earned $116 million globally and won the franchise its first Oscar (for visual effects). This very human monster movie about a disgraced kamikaze pilot made Yamazaki sought-after by the studios — and Steven Spielberg a fan. He already has shot the sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero (out Nov. 3) and next turns his eyes to Hollywood, with the Sony/Bad Robot feature Grandgear due out in 2028 and the original sci-fi feature Nue set up at 20th Century. 

The movie my parents didn’t let me see: “When I was in elementary school, I desperately wanted to see the three-headed monster, King Ghidorah, on the big screen. So I made a deal with my parents. ‘If you take me to see this movie, I promise you’ll never have to take me to another movie for the rest of my life.’ And so, I got to see that Godzilla movie. A few years later, a huge blockbuster came out—one that seemingly every boy in my class went to see. I wanted to see it so badly— it was almost unbearable. But because of the promise I had made, I couldn’t ask my parents to take me. The title of that movie was Jaws.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Hugging my cats always leaves me feeling refreshed and at peace. I believe that cats must have some kind of mechanism that dissolves the negative energy that humans carry inside themselves.”

Abigail, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, The Mummy

Under the umbrella of their collective Radio Silence, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett have created a franchise (Ready or Not), taken original swings (Abigail) and proved they could make a tired franchise feel vital with their pair of Scream movies. Next, they dust off another franchise, Universal’s The Mummy, with Brendan Fraser. They do it all at the blinding pace of one movie every year or so.

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was:
GILLETT: “I was forbidden from watching the scene in Robocop where Murphy (Peter Weller) is shot to pieces. Apparently, at least according to my parents, the rest of the movie is totally kid friendly!”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by:
BETTINELLI-OLPIN: “Listening to music or playing guitar.”
GILLETT: “Digging in my garden or playing Red Dead Redemption 2.”

Civil War, Eldin Ring

An intellectual who feels like your favorite stern (but cool) professor, Garland is revered for revamping the zombie genre as the novelist turned screenwriter behind 2002’s 28 Days Later and then becoming a top director in his own right with Ex Machina, Annihilation and Civil War. In addition to writing and producing the new 28 Years Later trilogy, he’s in post on the sweeping video game movie Elden Ring, his biggest swing to date

The duo paid their dues in children’s TV and with their indie superhero film Freaks before the critical and commercial hit Final Destination: Bloodlines catapulted them to top filmmaker status. The pair spent the past year making splashy deals all over town. Which movie will go first? Hard to say, but their high-profile attachments include Metal Gear Solid and a Venom animated movie for Sony, and the Stephen King adaptation Desperation at Searchlight. Amid it all, they quietly shot a sequel to Freaks.

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was:
LIPOVSKY: “No restrictions, my mom took me to see Jurassic Park at 9 and I had nightmares for two years. 

STEIN: “My parents loved all kinds of movies and took me to everything. (Should I have really seen KIDS in the theater as a kid? Not sure.) The movie I had nightmares about was Time Bandits. At the end the parents touch a chunk of pure evil that’s hiding in their toaster and they vaporize into two piles of ash. That stuck with me my whole life.”

A Recent movie scene I’m jealous I didn’t direct:
LIPOVSKY: “The kids running at the end of Weapons.”
STEIN: “The nighttime flowerpot scene in Obsession.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by:
LIPOVSKY: “Hot tub after standing for 14 hours.”
STEIN: “Sleep!”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was:
LIPOVSKY: “A projectionist recently told me ‘I’ve seen a lot of movies, but I’ve never seen that!’”
STEIN: “The worst advice: ‘It’s fine, the audience won’t care about that.’ The audience feels everything, every bit of craft you put into a movie. Gotta keep pushing to make it as good as it can be.”

The best advice I got about directing was…
LIPOVSKY: “The cavalry isn’t coming” – Mark Duplass

The prop I took home without permission was:
STEIN: “I have the beautiful and creepy handmade pop-up book from our movie Freaks.”

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

DaCosta brings class to genre by pivoting between festival fare like Hedda and putting her own spin on classic properties like Candyman and 28 Days Later. Her showstopping “Number of the Beast” scene from Bone Temple, in which Ralph Fiennes pretends to be the devil while performing an Iron Maiden song, is perhaps the most arresting sequence from any genre film this year. 

The movie my parents didn’t let me watch: “I have a distinct memory of my eyes being covered during a scene in Forrest Gump when I was way too young to maybe even be in a movie theater.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “Every single beautiful, transcendent second of Flow.“

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Recently it’s been by watching Heartbreak High. Sad it’s done.”

Backrooms

One sign of impact: opening up a new lane for others. Parsons wasn’t the first person to turn a YouTube IP into a movie, but he was the first to make it into a blockbuster ($393.1 million globally, a record for A24). That has Warners bosses Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy and Universal chief Donna Langley among those personally courting him. All eyes are on what he’ll do next. Backrooms 2?

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was: “Altered States”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Playing GeoGuessr or making electronic scores for scenes that don’t exist.”

The prop I took home without permission: “Async’s threshold.”

Smile, Possession

One of the new crop of auteurs that has risen to the fore in recent years, Finn is behind Paramount’s ultraprofitable Smile franchise, which has a third installment in the works, with Finn producing and helping select his successor, as the filmmaker focuses on other movies. He’s shooting Possession, a remake of the 1981 cult horror movie that stars Callum Turner and Margaret Qualley.

The prop I took home without permission: “I don’t usually take any props home, but I always take the slate. On my current film, I might take home a propeller we accidentally melted right off a drone… But that’s all I’ll say about that.”

After an intense day of filming: “I like to unwind by taking a shower in the dark. A total and fantastic lack of stimuli. Highly recommend.”

A recent-ish scene I was jealous of: “Justin Long excitedly measuring more and more square footage of the creepy tunnels beneath the airbnb he wants to sell in Barbarian. But don’t tell Cregger.”

Alien: Romulus

Resuscitating a long-in-the-tooth franchise, Álvarez made one of the best Alien movies in years. The 2024 feature brought in $350.9 million globally and earned an Oscar nomination for best visual effects. Although the Uruguay-born filmmaker broke fans’ hearts when he stepped away from the sequel, all eyes are on what he sets up next. 

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up was: “The original Evil Dead.”

The recent movie scene I’m jealous that I didn’t direct: “The scene in Weapons when the possessed mother walks past the driver’s door and gets in the back seat with a pair of sharp scissors. Perfect suspense.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Reading books about filmmaking.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “To rewrite the whole second half of Don’t Breathe…. Saying it was too vulgar.”

The prop i took without permission: “The turkey baster from Don’t Breathe.”

Send Help

When you’ve had as long and varied a career as Raimi, it’s hard to surprise moviegoers. But he did just that with Send Help, a twisty survival thriller with a standout performance by Rachel McAdams. The filmmaker isn’t wasting his momentum and is hoping to tackle a remake of the 1978 ventriloquist dummy movie Magic next year, in addition to his prolific producing duties on everything from the Evil Dead movies to a sequel to the alligator horror hit Crawl.

Obsession

Obsession made Barker the undisputed most successful Gen Z director to date, with his $750,000 film standing as the fifth-highest-grossing horror movie of all time ($505.6 million globally). What makes him all the more impressive is his ability to actually get things done, a byproduct of his prolific days making sketches for social media. He’s already shot his follow-up feature, Anything but Ghosts, which he also stars in, and this summer had virtually every studio in town fighting for his next original project. Universal landed it and will pay him eight figures to write and direct. He also has a reboot of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for A24 on his docket.

The movie my parents didn’t let me watch: “The Ring. My parents were watching it one night, and I snuck up behind the couch and watched the whole thing. It gave me nightmares — it was the scariest movie I’d seen at that point, and it’s still a reference point for what I find scary today.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “Heading to the movie theater – my happy place.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “That it’s not your job to know how everything works — it’s your job to have a strong vision for what you want. If you’ve done your homework and your vision is clear, you’ll be able to answer almost any question that comes your way. And if you can’t answer it, chances are it’s a question for someone else on the team.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

The prop I took home without permission was: “I can’t say exactly what it was—it’d be a spoiler—but on Anything But Ghosts, I snuck something into my pocket during lunch on behalf of Aaron Paul.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

Nosferatu, Werwulf

Since his 2015 breakout The Witch, Eggers has carved out a rare niche as an auteur whom studios trust to make what essentially are big-budget art house films. His stories are as ornate as Gothic cathedrals, with audiences turning out for his highbrow, arcane tales. Nosferatu in 2024 stands as Focus Features’ third-highest-grossing movie ever, and the Lily-Rose Depp starrer Werwulf (Dec. 25) looks to challenge his audiences in new ways — this one is spoken entirely in Middle English. 

The prop i took without permission “The scrimshaw mermaid from The Lighthouse.”

The movie my parents didn’t let me see growing up: “My parents let me see most things, but if the movie was pushing the limit, there was an obligatory discussion about the content afterwards. For better and for worse.”

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “During The Northman, I watched ’80s action movies. On Nosferatu I watched black and white horror movies. On Werwulf, I went to bed as soon as humanly possible.”

The best (or worst) note I got on a movie was: “Make sure that aleatoric music adds to the tension or the emotion and isn’t just weird for weird’s sake.”

The best advice I got about directing was: “Tell your story through images. You need to be able to watch your film without sound and still understand the story.’ I don’t always succeed, but that’s the intention.”

Frankenstein

No one is more passionate and articulate about genre filmmaking than del Toro, who continues to bring artful soul to his creations. His Netflix adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein earned nine Oscar nominations (winning three). Think of him as the field’s poetic Merlin. He’s preparing for a 20th anniversary rerelease of his Spanish-language breakout Pan’s Labyrinth and next directs the stop-motion animated feature The Buried Giant for Netflix.

Sinners

Coogler has built an enviable career revamping Rocky with Creed and elevating the comic book genre with best picture nominee Black Panther, bringing his empathy and humanity to franchise filmmaking. But the reason he’s near the top of THR’s genre list is Sinners. Who could have predicted that the most Oscar-nominated movie of all time would also be a horror movie, a mashup of music and culture, and a meditation on timely themes like Black self-determination? That’s the best of what genre can do — and then some. Next up, he returns to Wakanda for Black Panther 3 and also is working on his X-Files reboot for Hulu.

Weapons, Resident Evil

It took Cregger just four years — and two movies — to become an elite filmmaker who commands eight-figure deals. The 2022 low-budget cult hit Barbarian established him as one to watch. Then Weapons became not just one of the big moneymakers of 2025 ($270 million on a $38 million budget) but also landed an Oscar for Amy Madigan’s performance as Aunt Gladys. All of his projects have lit up insane bidding wars, including The Flood, a sci-fi feature that he will shoot for Warner Bros. early next year. He also is co-writing a Gladys prequel for the studio, even as he prepares for the Sept. 18 release of Sony’s Resident Evil.

After an intense day of filming, I unwind by: “[Playing] video games. It’s a really easy way for me to power my brain down and chew on something that has nothing to do with the production. I can just kill bad guys, and numb out. I’m sure there’s healthier ways to deal with stress but this is my junk food. And magnesium baths. During a shoot I take a lot of magnesium baths. Maybe that’s healthier.”

Best advice I’ve received about directing: “A director much smarter and more successful than me told me something that I’ll never forget. He said ‘Your department heads do not work for you. You work for them. And your job is to communicate to them what is in your head so precisely that there is no room for error.’ I think about that every day. I can never expect anyone to see exactly what I have in my mind. It’s my responsibility to get them on the same page.”

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GENRE DIRECTORS TO WATCH

Axelle Carolyn directed the well-received horror episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and is a veteran of numerous horror TV shows. 

Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus put a supernatural lens on queer trauma and became a Sundance darling. 

Dylan Clark was tapped to helm the new Blair Witch Project movie and has Portrait of God set to follow soon after, with Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele producing.

Mali Elfman, daughter of composer Danny Elfman, has the backing of Radio Silenceand Divide/Conquer — and ’90s scream queen Sarah Michelle Gellar on her call sheet for Thud.

Natalie Erika James directed the Rosemary’s Baby prequel Apartment 7A for Paramount+ and made Sundance audiences squirm with this year’s eating-disorder horror feature Saccharine. 

Nikyatu Jusu’s 2022 feature Nanny was the first horror movie to win the Sundance grand jury prize. Next up, she has a mysterious supernatural horror movie with Screen Gems and John David Washington.

Ben Leonberg‘s Good Boy barked up scares (and featured one of the best posters of 2025). He’s got Ankler Snatcher set up at Sony.

Chloe Okuno scales up from the Sundance horror feature Watcher, starring scream queen Maika Monroe, to the upcoming Neon movie Brides, set in 1961 Italy with Olivia Cooke.

Spanish helmer Carlota Pereda makes her English-language debut with The Edge of Normal, starring Chloë Grace Moretz as a woman who as a teen was abducted by a sadistic man.

Ian Tuason moves from Undertone, which grossed a massive $21.5 million on a $500,000 budget, to take the reins of the next Paranormal Activity movie.

Alex Ullom’s microbudget It Ends is now in theaters, and he has 4 X 4: The Event following behind for Neon, described as Battle Royale meets Saw.