Who's your favorite horror director of all time?

I knew Ari Aster was a horror genius when, about three-quarters of the way through , people started screaming and I didn’t know why. First one shriek, then another, as I frantically searched the screen for the impetus. Of course the reason was Toni Collette’s demon-infested body crawling on the ceiling, and when I finally spotted her, I jumped as well. Ari Aster may have only made two movies, Hereditary and , but I defy you to find me a horror director with a stronger one-two punch debut. Both films are deliciously terrifying but emotionally impactful, and they showcase tremendous lead performances by women. And both are jam-packed with instantly iconic images (the flower crown, the telephone pole, the bear carcass). I’ll forever be a stan, and no one is more ready to smash that pre-order button for than me. Aster and Patti LuPone? I mean, COME ON. [Matthew Huff]

If there’s one thing that unites the genre-defining horror films of , it’s the sense that we all might, ultimately, be fucked. Carpenter creates films where bad things happen for very little reason, beyond the simple badness of the world: Walk up to the wrong door on Halloween? Rescue the wrong husky from the hostile arctic? Go visit the wrong reclusive horror author? You’re fucked—and no amount of sharp wit, guile, or charisma (traits most of Carpenter’s iconic heroes have in abundance) is likely to change that. The fact, then, that his films are somehow also incredibly fun—often times because of that blend of the brash and the bleak—speaks to his obvious joy in the subject matter; certainly, , to pick my personal favorite of the bunch, is the most gleefully enjoyable movie ever made in which the best case scenario for the ending is that every remaining character slowly freezes to death. [William Hughes]

When you love the horror genre as much as I do, picking your favorite horror director is no simple task. But if there’s one maestro of horror who had the biggest impact on my life, it would have to be Wes Craven—and for one very good reason: . During the golden age of the slasher genre (circa 1978–1984), a time when people were making movies about masked Michael Myers wannabes offing teenagers with machetes, drills, or hatchets on whatever holiday was up for grabs, Craven one-upped them all by dreaming up the most imaginative slasher of all, Freddy Krueger (my number one boogeyman). A burnt child killer who comes back from the dead and seeks revenge in the dreams of his victims remains such a wildly original concept. And of course, there’s the iconic Freddy glove. It’s the horror film that sparked my imagination. I also have to give shoutouts to Craven’s work on and —the former reinvented and reignited the slasher genre in the ’90s and the latter paved the way for the meta horror films that followed, but both were proof that Craven was the master of subversive and satirical horror. And of course, there’s The People Under The Stairs, The Serpent And The Rainbow, and The Hills Have Eyes. Heck, I even have a soft spot for —a bonkers creative misfire but one helluva fun watch. It’s been seven years since Craven’s death and his presence in the horror world is terribly missed. It’s a shame we’ll never get any more movies from him. [Gil Macias]

David Cronenberg doesn’t just make movies. He creates visceral, smart, blood-soaked cinematic experiences that pull you in and don’t release you until he’s ready to do so. Cronenberg goes where other directors might pull back or cut away, and he revels in exploring the darkest recesses of his often awkward, unlikable characters’ desires, ambitions, and eccentricities. Over the years, he’s crafted some straight-up horror movies, including Shivers, Rabid, Scanners, The Brood, The Dead Zone, Videodrome, The Fly, eXistenZ, and, most recently, , securing his place as the dean of body horror. But even his non-horror outings—from Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch to Crash and Eastern Promises—deliver pure dread, brutal carnage, and/or surreal imagery. And he asks audiences to think about what they’re watching. I’ve seen every Cronenberg film, most multiple times, and will do so for as long as he chooses to make them. [Ian Spelling]

A monster with pale, sagging skin scoops two eyeballs into the palm of his hands. A ghostly schoolboy appears in a window’s reflection. Bradley Cooper smears blood on the wall as he flees cinema’s most terrifying villain: Cate Blanchett. Guillermo del Toro is the mastermind behind so many of my favorite images on film. His deft blend of grotesquerie and poetry targets gut and brain alike, and he doesn’t shy away from tugging at heartstrings either. is a particular triumph, a fantasy whose most visceral horror stems not from giant toads or Doug Jones’ faun or Pale Man, but Spain’s real-life Francoist dictatorship. This is a storyteller who understands the real root of evil: Who needs monsters when you have fascists? [Jack Smart]

No one disarms and disgusts quite like Julia Ducournau. Much of the French director’s skill lies in her ability to wield atmosphere—a sensual scene can turn stomach-churning on a dime. Ducournau won the Palme D’Or in 2021 for , which theorizes the line between human and machine to sickening effect. Before that, she explored coming-of-age through a cannibalistic pair of sisters in 2016’s masterful . Much like its predecessor, Titane mixes long, unforgiving cuts with a fleshy palpability, bringing the viewer sometimes uncomfortably close to her characters. Ducournau’s body horror is top shelf—anyone with a nipple ring, beware Titane—but she never skimps on existential dread. [Hattie Lindert]

Mike Flanagan loves horror stories. You can feel it in the very bones of his movies and shows, from the ornately constructed timeless wonder of to the ferocious confrontation with memory and regret that is . It’s not just that he’s a dedicated craftsman with a keen eye for structure and tension-building that makes this clear, although no one who’s seen structural masterworks like Gerald’s Game or suspense-packed needlers like could miss those gifts. It’s that there’s a clear, present emotional earnestness in absolutely everything he’s doing, whether he’s stepping into another storyteller’s source material or putting his heart on display for the world with something like Midnight Mass. He didn’t invent the “emotional horror” for which he’s become best-known, but he has perfected it. His willingness to keep the bond between terror and hopeful humanity so present in every facet of his work will always fill me with joy. [Matthew Jackson]

Director Alfred Hitchcock is known as The Master of Suspense, not The Master of Horror. But let’s face it, the London-born director was still one sick dude. He knew that the most terrifying, inescapable horrors always happen in the mind: Scottie (James Stewart) obsessively molding his new love into a twisted version of his old love in 1958’s ; Norman (Anthony Perkins) burying the guilt he feels for murdering his mother by becoming his mother in 1960’s ; Mark (Sean Connery) conquering his frigid, kleptomaniac wife by raping and sexually blackmailing her in 1964’s overlooked . Hitchcock’s shamefully abusive treatment of his leading ladies adds a disturbing layer of twisted realism to some of his films, especially , where he was infamously cruel to star Tippi Hedren. He may not gross us out like David Cronenberg or terrify us like John Carpenter. But Hitchcock’s films crawl into your nightmares in ways that even the most disturbing body horror cannot. [Mark Keizer]

. That should be enough to explain why Karyn Kusama is such an impactful horror director. The film has finally achieved the beloved status it should’ve gotten upon its 2009 release. Kusama’s confident camerawork taps into body horror and demonic entities—under the guise of a darkly comedic tale about feminism and female friendships. And her work has continues to make a mark, including 2015’s , an unsettling thriller about grief and cults that benefits from Kusama’s tension-building direction. Her chops translate to the small screen too, as seen in her episodic work for the dystopian The Man In The High Castle as well as HBO’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Outsider. Kusama has a nuanced understanding of how to deliver pulsating gore and suspense, and she helmed one of last year’s best episodes: the pilot. Her craftwork is on full display in the Showtime drama’s debut (for which she’s also an executive producer) and immediately establishes the thrilling story. [Saloni Gajjar]

At the heart of most horror is the fear of the unknown. What’s that noise? What might the creepy character do to you? Can you survive the night? We try to take refuge in the familiar, and nobody’s better at gradually taking away everything familiar (and therefore comforting) than David Lynch. You can’t escape his surreal nightmares; should you try, as Bill Pullman does in , you may end up inside a different one, as a different person, equally screwed. Rooted, like the best horror, in real fears—of fatherhood (), failure (), or societal and familial expectations (Twin Peaks, )—Lynch’s scariest works disorient and distort the psyche, refusing to allow reassuring explanations to penetrate. But there’s always hope; even when his characters lose, there’s a better than average chance they’ll ascend to Heaven as angels in the end. [Luke Y. Thompson]

Jordan Peele changed the game for horror, in ways that I suspect we won’t truly grasp until decades from now. Even in acknowledging what a big deal the Key & Peele alum has become in the genre space, there’s still a popular misconception as to why. No, it’s not because social horror is novel, as the genre has always been innately aware of societal plights and grievances. And it’s not that Black horror hadn’t been done before, as authors and filmmakers have been carving out places for us a decade ago. What Peele has accomplished across three films as director-writer, , , and , and two solely as screenwriter, Candyman and Wendell & Wild, is create horror stories that transcend the boundaries of the genre space, changing the way we think and even speak. From the Sunken Place, and the Tethered, to , Peele has drawn out aspects of our society that have always been present—our fears and secret truths—and made them accessible by blending reality with pop culture, resulting in a shift in the way we talk about politics, celebrity, and deeply rooted human failures. This accessibility has garnered him a reputation as a horror filmmaker who even entices non-horror fans to seek out his films, simply to get a glimpse of what’s on his mind in this present moment. Peele’s films operate like a stack of measuring cups, little ones inside of big ones, and the more willing the viewer is to take out each one to get the bottom, the more ample a serving of horror they receive, and the more aware they become of our own humanity and all the beauty, ugliness, and inability to look away that it entails. [Richard Newby]

Is there a filmmaker better at horror-comedy than ? He recognizes the line between horror and humor is a blurry one. The audience can be tipped into one or the other with the slightest nudge. Raimi does it with two fingers in the eyes, and his horror films live in that tension because he takes such delight in torturing his creations. Whether it be Ash (Bruce Campbell) from the films or ’s Christine (Alison Lohman), Raimi treats characters with the cruelty of a god. He makes entertainment out of the eternal, cosmic horror they face; the characters’ foolish insistence on surviving. Maybe that’s why watching his movies is such a delight. We’re all complicit in a horror movie; Raimi was among the first to say that that can be fun, too. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Horror movies remain consistently popular with younger viewers because they validate discombobulating emotions like anxiety and fear. These films help kids process those feelings in a world that downplays or even stigmatizes them, while also trying to say something about society. Few understand that better than , a pioneering independent filmmaker who took his DIY production experience and applied it to rich nightmare-scapes. In the process he defined the zombie sub-genre. his original masterpieces— (1968), (1978), and (1985)—were shot through with trenchant social commentary on racial prejudice and inequality, consumerism, anti-science militarism, class conflict, and more. And Romero extended this trilogy in the mid-2000s with three more zombie films. Long before “elevated horror” became cool, Romero was attaching scares and goriness to scenarios which could open an audience’s eyes to lurking real-world horrors, and perhaps make them think. [Brent Simon]

There’s a reason James Wan has been referred to as the Modern Master of Horror. His directorial debut, 2004’s , might have ushered in the torture porn subgenre, but it also provided a crash course in mounting dread and a “WTF” twist ending that audiences still talk about. In addition, Saw became Wan’s first thriving franchise. The Australian native, however, proved more than a one trick pony. Straying away from his gore-filled outings, Wan demonstrated more restraint, but equal nail-biting terror, by emphasizing atmosphere, tension, music and, yes, jump scares in Dead Silence and . , an intelligent haunted-house romp, further cemented his ability to elicit goosebumps. It also ignited an MCU-style shared universe not previously seen in the horror genre. Spin-offs and sequels included Annabelle, The Conjuring 2, The Nun, The Curse of La Llorona… with more to come. Regardless of the project, Wan’s work demands that audiences squirm and shriek in their seats. [Bryan Cairns]