Horror's new hope
A new generation of horror directors that will hopefully change the game up a bit.
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Jeremy Saulnier has slyly defined a unique cinematic aesthetic that complements his idiosyncratic narrative premises. His sophomore feature, Blue Ruin (2013) a quirky, crime drama set in a pretty, but grimier part of suburban America was a festival darling and supplanted his name within the independent movie scene. His upcoming project Green Room looks like more of the same strangely engaging stuff from the incredibly promising writer/director.- Director
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Mike Flanagan is a prolific writer, director, and editor of feature films and television, and founder of Red Room Pictures. Flanagan entered into an exclusive overall deal with Amazon Studios in 2023 for television projects (after a similar exclusive deal with Netflix lasted from 2018-2022), and has produced feature films for Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, and Netflix, among others. Flanagan is best known for his work in horror films and television series, which has attracted the praise of critics for his focus on character and lack of reliance on jump scares. Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, and William Friedkin, among others, have praised him.
Flanagan was born in Salem, Massachusetts to Timothy and Laura Flanagan. The family relocated frequently, as Timothy was in the U.S. Coast Guard, and finally settled in Bowie, Maryland. As a child, he would shoot and edit short movies on VHS. This continued as he attended Archbishop Spalding High School in Severn, Maryland, where he was active in the theatre department and the president of the Student Government Association. A graduate of Towson University's Electronic Media and Film department, Mike moved to Los Angeles in 2003 and began working as an editor of sketch comedy shows, reality television, documentary programming and commercials before his Kickstarter-funded breakout feature Absentia (2011) launched his filmmaking career.
Flanagan's films, all of which he directed, wrote, and edited, include Oculus (2013), Hush (2016), Before I Wake (2016), Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Gerald's Game (2017), Doctor Sleep (2019), and The Life of Chuck (2024). He also created, directed, and served as showrunner on the series The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), the teen horror series The Midnight Club (2022) and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023).
Flanagan has been nominated for dozens of awards for writing, directing and editing, and was presented with the Visionary Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films in 2022. He is an active member of the Producers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America West, Motion Picture Editors Guild, and Screen Actors Guild.
Flanagan lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Kate Siegel, whom he married in 2016. They have a son and a daughter together, as well as a son from Flanagan's previous relationship with Absentia actress Courtney Bell. He has been sober since 2018, and frequently uses his work to explore themes of addiction, recovery, and empathy.- Director
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Dennis Widmyer graduated from Long Island University's film program in 1999 with four short films and five feature film scripts under his belt. Within a year he began production assistant work on small independent films. In 2000 he graduated to working on studio films and served as an art department assistant on the Ben Stiller vehicle 'Zoolander.' A few years later he followed this up with another Ben Stiller film 'Duplex,' with co-star Drew Barrymore. In-between he worked on the Heather Graham sex comedy 'The Guru' as well as a handful of commercials from directors like Martin Scorsese.
In 2003 he co-founded Parallactic Pictures with long-time collaborator Kevin Kölsch. Parallactic Pictures began with the back-to-back production of two feature-length projects: 'Postcards From The Future,' a documentary on bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk ("Fight Club," "Choke") and 'Absence,' a kidnapping mystery told from three point of views. The projects share a common bond in that 'Absence' was shot on a shoestring budget (under $30,000) with revenue earned from sales of the Chuck Palahniuk documentary.
Widmyer spent the next few years shooting short films, commercials, music videos and festival bumpers. In 2011 his short film 'Curtain' placed at a number of prestigious film festivals including Fantastic Fest, Cinequest and The Telluride Horror Show.
In 2013, he and Kevin Kölsch followed up this string of shorts with their third feature film, 'Starry Eyes' for Snowfort Pictures and Dark Sky Films. After premiering at SXSW the film went on to tour the world, playing such festivals as Sitges, Fright Fest UK, Fantasia and more.
The two followed this feature with another short project, this time the opening segment in an horror anthology for XYZ Films titled 'Holidays' which also features entries from Kevin Smith, Scott Stewart and Gary Shore.
Most recently, they directed the upcoming adaptation of 'Pet Sematary' for Paramount Pictures and producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura. The film is due out on April, 5, 2019.- Director
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At 19 Adam got his start in feature film making early with his directorial debut Home Sick, a slasher horror film starring Bill Moseley and Tom Toweles. However it was his second effort at 24 years old with the film Pop Skull that garnered him a talent to watch. Made for a budget of around 2000 dollars he managed to capture the attention of French Distribution company The Wild Bunch. The film went on to premiere at the prestigious Rome Film Festival and the American Film Institute Film Festival. His dark and sometimes abrasive directing/editing style has been compared to directors such as David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, and Shinya Tsukamoto.- Production Designer
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Robert Houston Eggers is an American filmmaker and production designer. He is best known for writing and directing the historical horror films The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), as well as directing and co-writing the historical fiction epic film The Northman (2022). His films are noted for their folkloric elements, as well as his efforts to ensure historical authenticity.- Director
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Kevin Kopacka is an Austrian / Sri Lankan painter and director.
He grew up in Graz, Austria and moved to Berlin, Germany in 2006. In 2007 he started his studies of Fine Art at the University of Arts, Berlin in the class of the Japanese artist Leiko Ikemura. He graduated as Master Student in 2012.
His work often deals with paranormal and metaphysical elements.- Director
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Born and raised in Istanbul, Evrenol studied Film Studies and Art History at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Upon graduating, he has independently written, directed and produced short horror films, which won him several international awards, as well as being officially selected to more than 40 international genre film festivals around the world.
His feature debut film Baskin (2015), based on his 2013 short film of the same title, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness section, and awarded the Best Director at Austin Fantasticfest's New Wave Awards.- Director
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Leigh Janiak is a film director and screenwriter born on February 1, 1980 in Ohio, USA. She is the daughter of Karen L. Janiak and Nestor K. Janiak of Mentor, Ohio, USA. Her feature film directorial debut was horror/mystery Honeymoon (2014) starring Rose Leslie from Game of Thrones (2011), and Harry Treadaway who can be seen on the television series Penny Dreadful (2014) as Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Leigh Janiak has been generating a lot of buzz after it was announced that she was attached to direct and co-write a sequel for the 1996 cult thriller The Craft (1996). Leigh has also recently directed episodes from the hit television series Scream: The TV Series (2015) as well as directing on another television series, Outcast (2016). She has been married to Ross Duffer since December 2015- Director
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Justin Benson was born on 9 June 1983 in San Diego, California, USA. He is a director and producer, known for The Endless (2017), Spring (2014) and Synchronic (2019).- Director
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Aaron Moorhead was born on 17 December 1987. He is a director and cinematographer, known for The Endless (2017), Spring (2014) and Synchronic (2019).- Producer
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Jill "Sixx" Gevargizian is a director and producer from Kansas City, Missouri. Much like the protagonist in her new film The Stylist (2016), she has been a hairstylist for over 10 years. As a child, Gevargizian picked up her dad's camcorder, and the rest is history! In 2012, she decided to bring independent horror films to her hometown by creating a monthly showcase called Slaughter Movie House - that she is still running today. Gevargizian has worked on many films outside of her own. She was the second-unit director for Jen & Sylvia Soska's ABCs of Death 2 (2015) segment, and recently assistant director on James Bickert's 35MM feature Frankenstein Created Bikers (2016). Her directorial debut, a short entitled Call Girl (2014), starred genre-favorites Laurence Harvey (The Human Centipede II & III) and Tristan Risk (The Editor, American Mary), and her micro-short Grammy (2015) was distributed by CryptTV. The Stylist (2016), starring Najarra Townsend (Contracted), sliced through the competition, screening at the best genre film festivals across the globe and winning 17 awards, including the Jury Award at Etheria Film Night and Best Performance in a Short (Najarra Townsend) at Fantastic Fest and Monster Fest.- Director
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Ana Lily Amirpour was born in Margate, Kent, England, UK. She is a director and writer, known for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), The Bad Batch (2016) and Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021).- Writer
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Ted Geoghegan studied English at The University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, fine-tuning his skill as a screenwriter under the tutelage of Carroll O'Connor and attaining a degree in English Education with an emphasis on the works of William Shakespeare.
In 2000, Geoghegan co-wrote German director Andreas Schnaas' first English-language film, Demonium (2001), and followed it with numerous genre features in Europe and The United States. He founded his own independent production company in 2007, producing one short film and three features under its Starving Kappa Pictures banner. In 2013, Geoghegan co-wrote the Korean blockbuster The Berlin File (2013), and began his directing career two years later with the critically-acclaimed We Are Still Here (2015).
Ted has written about genre films for a number of online and print publications, and has been regularly featured in the media as an expert on slasher and exploitation cinema.- Director
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Roxanne Benjamin is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. She is known for directing the horror films Body at Brighton Rock and There's Something Wrong with the Children and producing the horror anthology films V/H/S, V/H/S/2 and Southbound. She also wrote and directed segments of the horror anthologies Southbound and XX.
Roxanne Benjamin was born and raised in Bradford, Pennsylvania. She began her film career producing V/H/S and its sequel V/H/S/2. Benjamin wrote and directed segments for Southbound and XX. She also wrote and directed her first feature film, Body at Brighton Rock, and has worked as a director on such television series as Creepshow, Riverdale, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Nancy Drew, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin and One of Us Is Lying. Her second feature film There's Something Wrong with the Children is due in 2023.
In July 2021, Benjamin signed on to direct an American remake of the Spanish horror and thriller film La Cueva titled Fall Into Darkness.
She is very reserved about her personal and private life.- Director
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Adrian Garcia Bogliano was born on 4 July 1980 in Madrid, Spain. He is a director and writer, known for Night of the Wolf (2014), Here Comes the Devil (2012) and Come Play with Me (2021).- Director
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Rose Glass is an English film director and screenwriter. She made her feature film debut with the 2019 psychological horror film Saint Maud, which was nominated for two awards at the 74th British Academy Film Awards. In 2020, Glass was named Best Debut Director at the British Independent Film Awards. Her second feature film Love Lies Bleeding had its premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in January 2024.