The 15 Best Horror Directors Working Today

[Dead & Messed Up]

Figured this was worth splitting from the Sangre thread, since it's something more self-contained and not out-and-out discussion per se.


15. James Watkins
(Eden Lake, The Woman in Black)

What I loved about the potential for ghost stories, there's a purity in the grammar of them... it's a real challenge, because you're trying to get the pacing right and judge the scares and atmosphere. This incremental sense of dread. It's a very technical challenge.

- James Watkins


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EJa_HY7RUOo/VCy5J7Cn5aI/AAAAAAAACfc/wibfpRLI-NY/s1600/jameswatkins.jpg

Where to Start?
The Woman in Black (2012)

Can we start out this whole thing by talking about the collective awesome of recent UK horror? Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block), Chris Smith (Black Death), Neil Marshall (The Descent), Ben Wheatley (Kill List). Irish flicks like The Eclipse, Grabbers, and Citadel? And how about James Watkins? Director of two archetype-heavy horror thrillers. 2008's Eden Lake is a brutal twist on the "vacation gone bad" (think The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Wolf Creek). 2012's The Woman in Black is about a mansion that... okay, look, it's basically The Haunting. Before you can say "Gaw blimey," these films swing into old horror standards like a woman rushing through a dark forest and a man wandering through shadowy hallways.

In both films, Watkins displays a casual control of the horror set-piece as he moves heroes from point A to point Worse, threats hinted at more than witnessed. Eden Lake sees hero Jenny (Kelly Reilly) continually escaping tormentors, listening for their distant voices. The Woman in Black shows Arthur (Danielle Radcliffe) moving from one damn decrepit room to another, danger communicated by how long he holds his shots - when is something gonna happen?! In both films, there's a stately style to how the shots linger, hold steady, how Watkins uses wide shots to miniaturize his characters against imposing environments.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3_nUJuIyhlI/VCyzSZueBYI/AAAAAAAACfE/mf3Xqu_iRAE/s1600/edenlakeposter.jpg

Between the two films, I prefer The Woman in Black. I jive more to its old-school atmospherics, even if the front half is overloaded with hacky jump-scares. Aah! It's... just a crow. Aah! It's... a running faucet. Eden Lake shoots through its scuzzy storyline with energy and unapologetic nastiness (the heroine at one point hides in a waste container and pops out covered in shit), but its ending overloads on the social commentary, making some weird, maybe-bigoted points on class.

Watkins has his best films ahead of him, possibly including upcoming lake monster thriller The Loch, but what Eden Lake and The Woman in Black offer up so far is sturdy horror-craft with uncommon control, craft that reinvigorates classic thriller tropes and reminds us a bit of how they felt the first time around. Cheers to that, mate.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qFeU9nToT10/VCyzSargGUI/AAAAAAAACfI/_vuwg3JRKf0/s1600/womaninblackposter.jpg

[Skitch]

Whoa, I should watch both of those. Subscribed.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Whoa, I should watch both of those. Subscribed.

Neither is great, but both are good. Although I've heard some fair criticisms of Eden Lake from people on this board.

[Winston*]

Eden Lake


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLToN2pjik8

[Winston*]

Cool thread btw.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Hah! :lol:

[Dead & Messed Up]

14. Adrián GarcÃ*a Bogliano
(Penumbra, Here Comes the Devil)

I always thought that to open a movie with a couple having sex. In this case, I thought that was great because that’s what the film is about. It’s not about horror. It’s not about supernatural elements. It’s about sex and sexual repression.

- Adrián GarcÃ*a Bogliano


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JE228t3dYfo/VC8TrTdEqVI/AAAAAAAACgE/S7S7vHK3ixY/s1600/adriangarciablogliano.jpg

Where to Start?
Here Comes the Devil (2012)

Argentine director Adrián GarcÃ*a Bogliano's just now breaking into the USA with upcoming werewolf-in-a-nursing-home thriller Late Phases, but the man's worked in the South American horror scene for over a decade. I've seen only two of his films and one short, but they bubble with a weird energy like nobody else working today. Example. The man loves an aggressive cross-cutting. His "B for Bigfoot" segment in The ABCs of Death plays a child hyperventilating in bed against his babysitter breathing hard during sex, and Here Comes the Devil has a similarly opposite-of-subtle sequence where two pubescent kids enter an ominous cave while their father enters their mother's cave.

The big thing about Bogliano? A complete disregard for tonal consistency. South Korean directors like Bong Joon-Ho and Park Chan-Wook have no problem veering wildly from thriller melodrama to absurdist comedy. One scene in Bong's stunningly bleak procedural Memories of Murder sees an idiot cop get frustrated during an interrogation and jump-kick the man he's questioning. Bogliano's effects are less severe but plenty jarring. A scene of a woman following her zombie-like children in Here Comes the Devil is packed with Sam Raimi fast zooms to her worried face. Why? To disorient the viewer, I think. To avoid lulling them with a steady tone.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EHZfnN8ETgY/VC8KB9-AqhI/AAAAAAAACfw/3qzbPhfc2Sk/s1600/penumbraposter.jpg

His astrological-cult thriller Penumbra also upsets expectations. The film's heroine is hardly likable, the villains rarely as uniformly threatening as you'll find in something like Ti West's The House of the Devil. There's no mystery to them, as Bogliano shows them sneering behind the heroine's back almost immediately, like cartoon characters or old silent movie villains. Also, one of the villains goes to the trouble of greasing up heroine Marga's boobs, and I still don't know what that had to do with the penumbra thing.

Bogliano levies the potential awkwardness by stuffing his eccentricity into prepackaged horror ideas. Here Comes the Devil is essentially an occultized (sic?) Village of the Damned, one of those are-the-kids-evil? movies where the kids are so clearly evil that watching the film borders on redundancy. Penumbra riffs on Rosemary's Baby. I first noticed Bogliano two years ago when I watched Penumbra and thought it didn't quite work. After watching Here Comes the Devil, Penumbra's shifts make more sense. Bogliano's convinced that a horror film should elbow viewers in the ribs as it shoves them toward the cliff.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O887IESOHGs/VC8KBUzmfrI/AAAAAAAACfs/uEllTGdycWE/s1600/herecomesdevilpos_big.jpg

[Skitch]

My problem with Here Comes The Devil involves that poster.

I was expecting some serious apocalypse type shit at the end. Not only was it not that, but I had lost any sympathy for the characters with the spoiler spoiler reveal of the truth. I didn't care at all that they were dead.

But that may just be me. My buddy really liked it.

[Dukefrukem]

I wanted to like The Woman in Black. I really did. I even gave it a positive review after seeing in theaters, but I can't support ghost stories where the ghost poses no threat.

[Spun Lepton]

This is gonna end with Ti West in the top three and I'm gonna feel like a schmuck for poking fun of him, right? Damn it.

[Dukefrukem]

Ti West and Brad Anderson FTW. Maybe Neil Marshall squeezed in there.

[Dead & Messed Up]

This is gonna end with Ti West in the top three and I'm gonna feel like a schmuck for poking fun of him, right? Damn it.

Egg all over your face. Seeping into your eyes, making you tear up in pain and regret.

[megladon8]

This is an AWESOME thread. Mega-subscribed :)

Have to admit I'd never even heard of Bogliamo before. Must check this stuff out...

[Dead & Messed Up]

This is an AWESOME thread. Mega-subscribed :)

Have to admit I'd never even heard of Bogliamo before. Must check this stuff out...

Give him one shot; he sticks to his mode, and I doubt it's to all tastes. And the few directors I've listed so far I find good, not great.

[Rowland]

You may have been the only person who listened when I recommended Penumbra a few years back DaMu, so it's nice to see that I'm not his only fan around here.

[Dead & Messed Up]

You may have been the only person who listened when I recommended Penumbra a few years back DaMu, so it's nice to see that I'm not his only fan around here.

Dude, I remember how helpful those recommendations were! It always seems like you're getting first word on names to watch for. Your comments were the first time I heard the words "Ben Wheatley." (What sweet words those are.)

[MadMan]

I really am still behind on modern horror. I blame the fact that not only am I diving into 90s horror this year but that I am too busy loving the shit out of 80s and 70s horror. With some 60s thrown in.

[MadMan]

Also as evidenced by my avatar I am a huge Ben Wheatley fan. And I love House of the Devil and The Innkeepers even though West's V/H/S segment sucked.

[Dead & Messed Up]

13. Franck Khalfoun
(P2, Maniac)


There’s a real mix of homeless, and artists, and wealthy people all mixed in the middle of downtown all sort of interacting with each other. That seemed like... a more logical setting for the character who is an artist, who ended up meeting another photographer artist, and that a relationship might start. And what a great place for a hunter, for a stalker, to find victims.

- Franck Khalfoun


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BATKEDvq8zI/VDOjDmD-wNI/AAAAAAAAChw/51Zrvwm1DSE/s1600/khalfoun.jpg
(this man hats very well)

Where to Start?
Maniac (2013)

Urban horror remains a mostly-untapped sub-genre of horror, when it really ought to be dominating these days. We no longer live in the frontier-laden world of horror that began with Poe's distant house of Usher and pretty much ended with Poltergeist transplanting every horror trope into the middle of town. While many horror directors struggle to accommodate modern life - mostly by dragging heroes back into the woods or apocalypse-ing the whole damn world - Franck Khalfoun's two horror films, P2 and Maniac, live in the center of the big city, and both work.

Well, they mostly work. P2 might not be to all tastes. It's one of those fast-paced single-setting suspense pieces, like Phone Booth or Red Eye. A girl gets stuck in a parking garage, and Wes Bentley of American Beauty is the demented security guard who won't let her out. The film offers no larger commentary, no deep meaning. It's just a heroine out-thinking a killer in an eerily banal setting for around 90 minutes. At least a third of what makes this movie worth watching is a scene where a blood-soaked Bentley plays Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas" over the garage intercom and shakes his hips and lip-syncs with the King.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-esqZcjLI59c/VDOgxwpmILI/AAAAAAAAChg/o1oHJBaa9_s/s1600/khalfoun_p2poster.jpg

Maniac, however, is something more, an achingly sad depiction of the compulsion of serial killing. The film's selling point sounds like a gimmick: nearly all the action in the film is shot from the point-of-view of its main character, Frank (Elijah Wood). But instead of growing tiresome, the limited perspective (camerawork sinuous instead of herky-jerky) forces the viewer to see how Frank sees. This leads to some ingenious techniques. Flashbacks stand directly next to present actions, and a few moments dislodge from Frank's perspective and smoothly circle around him. Is he having an out-of-body experience? Does it represent how killers must "detach" themselves from empathy?

In a way, there's something necessary about such a film, given how news media and popular culture are so eager to alternately romanticize and demonize serial killers without considering them as human beings who got lost along the way. Such people don't require our sympathy, but they do demand our understanding. Along with P2, Maniac shows Khalfoun's interest in finding real tension and horror in the middle of civilization, in the minds of normal-looking people. One of his next films is a reboot of The Amityville Horror. Let's hope the out-of-the-way mansion is as frightening as the city at night.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8D5HDnWZmcI/VDOgx9DvKaI/AAAAAAAAChc/rDLBl6AgJvA/s1600/khalfoun_maniacposter.jpg

[Dukefrukem]

Awesome Urban horror off the top of my head:

Creep, Midnight Meat Train, Land of the Dead, Attack the Block

Adding P2 to my queue.

[megladon8]

P2 aka watch Rachel Nichols' boobies bounce for 90 minutes.

[Dead & Messed Up]

P2 aka watch Rachel Nichols' boobies bounce for 90 minutes.

I didn't even notice. Heck, I'm so egalitarian, I didn't even realize she was a woman.

[Skitch]

I hated P2 with a passion that still burns. Really liked Maniac remake though.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I feel it's more important that someone like Maniac than P2.

[Dead & Messed Up]

12. Stuart Gordon
(Re-Animator, From Beyond, Edmond, Stuck)


Roger Corman was making Poe movies and it was those movies that really got me to read Poe. I’m happy that maybe some of the films I’ve done with Lovecraft have done the same for someone.

- Stuart Gordon


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uS9phRUn7a0/VDQwJY3_XgI/AAAAAAAACiA/1n6vRfqzePM/s1600/gordon.jpg

Where to Start?
Re-Animator (1985)

Where has Stuart Gordon gone? His last filmed piece of work was "Eater," a highlight of single-season horror anthology Fear Itself. That was back in 2008. Six years he's been absent from our precious glowing rectangles. Leaving his fans to clutch their limited edition Re-Animator video discs and sift through the overabundance of cheap Lovecraft adaptations on Netflix. Abandoning the minor masses that hold him as a paragon of horror's glory years and as a specific stylist of low-budget classics.

His films Re-Animator and From Beyond damn near created the sub-genre of gore-comedy "splatstick" (an ownership he shares with Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II and O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead). He made Pacific Rim before Pacific Rim with Robot Jox. He created a nasty "urban horror" trilogy in the 2000s with sour candies King of the Ants, Edmond, and Stuck. And he directed the best episode of the Masters of Horror series, "The Black Cat," which put Jeffrey Combs in the shoes, suit, and alcohol-drenched misery of legendary author Edgar Allan Poe.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tm38gT5qNhg/VDQwJiWjnEI/AAAAAAAACiM/EPJnmLeGBXc/s1600/gordon_reanimator.jpg

That episode inspired Gordon to create a play called Nevermore, a one-man-show that's played in Los Angeles since 2009 and again stars Jeffrey Combs as the troubled dreamer. Along with that success, Gordon's also produced a stage musical version of his own Re-Animator. This is only fair. Stuart Gordon began his drama career working for Chicago's Organic Theater, where - and I never get tired of typing this - he locked the doors on patrons during the more intense plays. What a dick. While Gordon's currently thriving on the stage, he's also developing a hyper-sexualized version of Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep." Had he directed anything in the past six years, he'd be much higher on the list.

Previous entries this month focused on recurring themes in directors' works, and that's because most of the entrants so far only have a few movies on their resume. Gordon's filmography is overwhelming, as he's one of the few '80s horror directors to not only survive to the present day, but to thrive. It's hard to point to one single unifying idea, although I've discussed his interest in joining sex and scares for more than just the usual exploitation gags (http://horrorfilms101.blogspot.com/2011/12/feature-orgasmic-theater-stuart-gordon.html). Part of the fun with Gordon is the sense that there are no limits, not in the type of movie he makes, not in how far he'll to go to make you squirm.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OwAUWsJNA8U/VDQwKfuR1fI/AAAAAAAACiQ/3Vhibmsew6c/s1600/gordon_stuck.jpg

[Dead & Messed Up]

11. Larry Fessenden
(Habit, The Last Winter, Beneath)


Life seems arbitrary and scary, consciousness seems subjective and tenuous. I like the horror genre because it invites the audience to see the world the way I see it: populated by demons, real and imagined.

-Larry Fessenden


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LGg93SZMnzs/VDQ3Sw51qSI/AAAAAAAACjk/mqfHwMzD2TE/s1600/fessenden.jpg

Where to Start?
Habit (1997)

One of the fun ironies of horror is that so many creatives use the genre as a way to ask interesting questions - questions more reputable genres might not bother with. Let's face it, few romance pictures or family dramas come with commentary devoted to social decay or the illusion of perception. But that's how things go with Larry Fessenden, the writer/director responsible for thoughtful indie exercises like Habit and Wendigo. Given his passion for horror-as-social-essay in his own work, it's no surprise that he's the most vocal commentator on George Romero retrospective Birth of the Living Dead.

Romero was the guy, after all, who made his zombies into allegories for revolution and gluttonous consumerism. Fessenden's The Last Winter, a snowbound supernatural thriller, takes a story about prehistoric ghosts (yep) and fashions it into a discomforting look at the USA's appetite for oil. Subtle in mood, if not in its core idea (Ron Perlman sounds like a member of the Bush/Cheney cabinet), The Last Winter succeeds in its atmosphere, and its thematic interest is genius. Let's face it: oil is literally the remnants of ancient plants and animals, and when humans turn it into pollution, and that pollution hastens the destruction of our own habitats - well, isn't that the ghosts of the past achieving some kind of revenge?


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v8mjfeLDsdU/VDQ3aEbFsaI/AAAAAAAACjs/w8k3TDOtPA4/s1600/fessenden_habit.jpg

The Last Winter is his most political work, but his previous two films challenge their supernatural stories. Habit asks if its central antagonist is a deranged sex bomb or a vampiric seductress, but it wisely never quite answers the question. Wendigo suggests that its Native American spirit might exist only in the imagination of young or mentally weak, in people who need illusions to make sense of reality's cruelty. That film struggled some with its final-act monster, a manifestation of the wendigo that looked more confusing than imposing. (The Last Winter also faltered with end-of-film special effects that felt too literal and weightless.)

Fessenden's more recent works, however, subtract these headier ideas for more cruel, straightforward horror. His Fear Itself episode "Skin and Bones" succeeds mostly as a showpiece for the brilliant, eerie actor Doug Jones (a.k.a our generation's Lon Chaney). He plays a man who returns from the wilderness and forces his wife into cannibalism. And TV movie Beneath, a Jaws-meets-Lifeboat trifle, is kind enough to make its teenagers burgeoning sociopaths and opt for a big dumb fish puppet over a big dumb computer effect. That film was mostly dismissed, not without some reason - a film needs a lot of contrivance to strand six kids on a boat in a small lake. Maybe the problem isn't that the film is bad, but that, like its giant catfish of death, Fessenden's most interesting when he's got more to chew on.

Side-note: credit also goes to Fessenden for founding Glass Eye Pix, which helped start the careers of Ti West (The House of the Devil) and Jim Mickle (Stake Land). Fessenden's currently supervising the first English feature of this list's #14, Adrian Garcia Bogliano.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F5-2pSZS4wQ/VDQ3aHBnSEI/AAAAAAAACjw/Y4iGR2r3eJc/s1600/fessenden_beneath.jpg

[megladon8]

Great choice, and yes, his influence on the horror community is immense. Many of the "big names" in horror today (both in front of and behind the camera) are around because he helped them get into the 'biz.

He's actually a really nice, interesting guy, too. After I saw and love The Last Winter I e-mailed his official website about how much I enjoyed it, and was surprised to have Fessenden himself respond. We started a short e-mail correspondence where we talked about indie film and horror in general. I don't remember many specifics from the conversation aside from his overall friendliness and how he seemed genuinely excited to talk to someone who had seen many of the films from Glass Eye Pix, and loved horror.

I want to see Beneath because of his involvement, but it just looks so dreadful.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Great choice, and yes, his influence on the horror community is immense. Many of the "big names" in horror today (both in front of and behind the camera) are around because he helped them get into the 'biz.

He's actually a really nice, interesting guy, too. After I saw and love The Last Winter I e-mailed his official website about how much I enjoyed it, and was surprised to have Fessenden himself respond. We started a short e-mail correspondence where we talked about indie film and horror in general. I don't remember many specifics from the conversation aside from his overall friendliness and how he seemed genuinely excited to talk to someone who had seen many of the films from Glass Eye Pix, and loved horror.

I want to see Beneath because of his involvement, but it just looks so dreadful.

Yeah, I enjoyed Beneath, but there's been so much hostility to it online that I hesitate to recommend it to anybody. It helps to go in with the expectation of a mean-spirited Corman production. Like Dante's Piranha. Maybe. The second half, where the kids start deciding who to feed to the fish, is involving. You have to be okay with the idea that the boat is inexplicably (i.e. literally no Earthly reason) stuck in the middle of the lake, despite its detritus washing to the shore. And with watching characters who are terrible human beings - in a genuine way, not in that mild idiotic way of most cabin or slasher movies. Like, these people are awful.

[Rowland]

Stuart Gordon tried to raise money through Kickstarter for a film adaptation of Nevermore but I don't recall it ever being close to making its projection, which is surely a pity, but to be frank, the project as it was pitched didn't sound terribly interesting. I can't believe his last feature was Stuck...

[Dead & Messed Up]

10. Pascal Laugier
(House of Voices, Martyrs, The Tall Man)

Horror is a way for me to express personal things. To escape from the irony and the intellectual misery public opinion has fallen into. The culture of “fantastic” is a good tool to feel far away from the dominating thoughts and the imperialism of the mass media. It’s a “counterculture,” free to express things that aren’t said.
- Interview With Shock Till You Drop, 2008[/right]


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ycc1IgKJ7GA/VDw-lFkef3I/AAAAAAAACkw/gujn-yOvd5g/s1600/pascal_laugier.jpg

Where to Start?
House of Voices (2005)

What's cool about Pascal Laugier's first three movies is how they all push different approaches to suspense and terror... while keeping certain ideas intact. House of Voices is an old-fashioned ghost story. Martyrs is a slough of human suffering. The Tall Man is a moody, plausible mystery. All three are about strong women struggling against imposing social systems (a church, a cabal, an entire town). All three pay careful attention to the victimization of children. All three couch antagonism in older, matronly women.

Laugier's best known for his middle film, Martyrs, a film so grueling I fast-forwarded through the final 20 minutes, stopping only to pick up necessary plot points. That may sound like a condemnation. It isn't, not necessarily. Martyrs centers on a woman made to suffer in the hopes that her pain will open her up to a transcendent, possibly divine knowledge. Get it? The film is literally asking what possible reward could justify the violence it contains. Of all the films labeled "torture porn" in the States and abroad, Martyrs is the one that goes furthest toward defending its own excess. Good on Laugier. I wanted to puke.


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K7sVaYxUwTQ/VDQz0RL3rzI/AAAAAAAACjM/pNa0rl5OLvc/s1600/laugier_martyrs.jpg

Doesn't hurt that the film's gorgeous, with its candy-red gore presented in monochrome rooms of bright white and dull grey. Laugier started this visual in the big white rooms of House of Voices, set at a defunct orphanage. That film's premise calls to mind The Devil's Backbone and (go figure) The Orphanage. House of Voices is slightly different, the only real child in the film being the unborn child of Anna (Virginie Leydon). House of Voices wins few points for originality, but it works on a basic level, and Laugier adds some attention-grabbing style to his strong sense of craft. One conversation features the camera floating around two women's heads against a black background. Another neat shot compresses Anna's cleaning chores by superimposing three of her on the same space, one brooming, one dusting...

As mentioned above, these three films feature strong women. Not the paradoxical type that horror films too often lean on (you know, the women that combine resilience with an uncanny ability to lose vital pieces of clothing and home in on trippable roots). Notably, Pascal Laugier has the good sense to test Jessica Biel's tough girl image in The Tall Man instead of rewarding it, putting her through an emotional and physical ringer as she tries to help children survive. I can't say I love all three of these films, but each one carries sincerity, forceful characters, classical style with deft touches. I don't know if Laugier's films are always "horror," and I don't think they're unqualified successes. But they feel imperative.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GXdyXDvCJCc/VDQz0ROdftI/AAAAAAAACjU/Id1gxJ1ZRmE/s1600/laugier_thetallman.jpeg

[Dukefrukem]

Own both Martyrs and Tall Man. Love them.

[Winston*]

I thought the the ending of The Tall Man was inexcusably dumb.

[MadMan]

Need to see some of Fessenden's work. I did love him in the underrated and rather delightful horror comedy I Sell The Dead.

[Morris Schæffer]

I think I've only seen Gordon's Fortress, but I enjoyed it.

[Dead & Messed Up]

9. James Wan
(Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring)


The only thread is that I think I learned a lot from Saw since it was my first movie. I learned what I could do and what I couldn't do, within my budget. I learned what worked and what didn't work with Saw, and the same with Insidious.

- Interview with Rolling Stone


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z6czcYZW0Y4/VDQyLfLDB7I/AAAAAAAACik/vwpzlyW-QoQ/s1600/wan.jpg

Where to Start?
Insidious (2010)

James Wan gracefully bowed out of the horror genre with the announcement that he'd direct the seventh Fast and Furious movie. Probably a good idea. After The Conjuring, what else could he do with horror? That film played like a summation of his career, using every trope in the playbook and exacting the story with a fastidious control of the mood. Were The Conjuring a debut film, I'd call it the work of a wunderkind. The fact that Wan worked his way up to it is impressive in a different way. It's proof that a creative doesn't necessarily have to start at "great," but can get there with hard work and discipline.

Looking back on Wan's career now, it's almost ironic to see where he started: directing the hyperkinetic Seven-derivative Saw, a film credited with starting the "torture porn" movement in the USA. The music-video editing and heavy metal soundtrack killed any sense of dread, sure, but even in that film, there are hints of Wan's interest in classical horror stuffs. The most interesting drama amounts to a locked-room mystery, with two people chained to grimy sewers in an industrial bathroom. How did they get there? How will they get out? Alongside that story engine, the villain speaks through a carnivalesque puppet on a tricycle (!) with spiral-painted cheeks and dead eyes.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcY4zZzRfI/VDQyO6EZtUI/AAAAAAAACis/wbqpZNnpz9A/s1600/wan_insidious.jpg

Wan returned to living puppets again and again, with none more annoying than those in his hackneyed (if well-meaning) Dead Silence. Although that film didn't work, it pointed up Wan's interest in eschewing "modern" horror stories for simpler, more archetypal tales. Insidious plays as a fun riff on Poltergeist, borrowing that film's old woman oracle and journey-to-the-afterlife climax. The Conjuring went further, transplanting its drama in the past and basing it on "true events" (hah). That film made time for the rotting old tree, the bog, the ruined manse on the outskirts of civilization - and whatever you do, don't go in the basement.

The Conjuring stands above his other work (including follow-up Insidious Part Two) in part because of the critical casting of Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor, who infuse basic characters with warmth and conviction. The other reason is because Wan refined his approach. Saw and Dead Silence played too loud. Insidious overemphasized its jump-scares but allowed for classic scare build-up - one step closer to victory. With The Conjuring, Wan finally quieted down and let events unfold. Think of that unbearable hide-and-seek game. Or the slow journey to the basement. Or Patrick Wilson standing beside the tree. Wan never quite delivered a masterpiece of the genre, but he came damn close, and his career reminds us that classical horror stories still work, goddamnit, so long as you learn how to tell them.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vU9_O1EJQdA/VDQyRfOayII/AAAAAAAACi8/ErJF0Pa9XBI/s1600/wan_theconjuring.jpg

[TGM]

After his latest (produced) movie released, James Gunn had this to say:


Can I take a moment to give a shoutout to James Wan? The movie he produced (along with my long-time manager Peter Safran) Annabelle, a sequel to a movie he directed, opened up to 37 million this weekend. That means this dude has created THREE huge franchises - Saw, Insidious, and Conjuring - that weren't based on pre-existing properties. Original horror films done with integrity that do well. That just doesn't happen in this day and age. I don't think he gets nearly enough props for the amazing feat of being able to repeat his success - he is the only director outside of James Cameron who seems to have such a keen insight into the public mind. Oh - and one more thing - he's a also a great guy. Congrats, James and company!

[Skitch]

Just watched his Dead Silence last night. Pretty decent flick!

[Dead & Messed Up]

Just watched his Dead Silence last night. Pretty decent flick!

I switched my TV color to black and white halfway through. Giving it that old-fashioned look helped a bit.

[Dead & Messed Up]

8. Rob Zombie
(The Devil's Rejects, Halloween, The Lords of Salem)

...all the films I grew up watching and loving, from The Holy Mountain to Eraserhead and something like Cannibal Holocaust, they didn't appeal to everybody. They had a very heavy tone. They weren't made for everybody. That's the way I look at my movies: You can't please everybody with this kind of material.

- interview with Complex


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qYgheaL8r08/VDQ5mM-65VI/AAAAAAAACkI/xgR65ByZHx4/s1600/zombie.jpg

Where to Start?
The Devil's Rejects (2005)

Rob Zombie is a Middle Ages alchemist stuck with a big pot of rocks. The goal? Make some gold. The process? Shove everything you've got into the cauldron, spark that fire, and hope that rocky soup doesn't bubble over and congeal into a mess on the floor. For Zombie, the "rocks" are inspirations like Texas Chain Saw, Peckinpah, Suspiria, Charles Manson (always toss in some Chuck Manson). The results range from the overblown excess of House of 1000 Corpses to the simmering images of The Lords of Salem. If the alchemists wanted gold, Zombie wants the Great Perverse Movie.

Thing is, Zombie found it early on with The Devil's Rejects. The film sequelizes his previous film House of 1000 Corpses while requiring the viewer to know nothing of that previous film. Calling the movie crass is like calling Jabba the Hutt portly. The Devil's Rejects begins and ends with over-the-top shoot-outs and features, as its centerpiece, a motel scene where one of the "heroes" sexually assaults an innocent woman, kills her husband, and then wears the man's face for his sobbing wife. You know, as a goof. What the film offers over House of 1000 Corpses is a more modulated pace and, most importantly, a slyer sense of humor. During their cross-country murder spree, the trio of rejects bicker about stopping for ice cream. And the sheriff chasing them flips his shit when a local film critic insults Elvis Presley.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Oe3BuUj9zUw/VDQ5mXaek3I/AAAAAAAACkU/MUiPQHXH0V8/s1600/zombie_devilsrejects.jpg

Zombie's style pushes for fast cuts, grainy images, close-ups of demented or pained faces, beading with sweat and lined with joy or terror. His movies feel like someone left the film canisters in a dusty closet on the Texas border decades ago. This style didn't work so well in his Halloween remakes. Trying to wedge his style into the prerequisites of a slasher, Zombie's adaptations worked only intermittently. At their best, Halloween and H2 diverted from the Myers legend and found their own groove by indulging Zombie's white trash interests and passion for singular visuals. At their worst, the films felt inexplicable and incomprehensible - a climactic chase scene in the first Halloween feels especially confusing and overshot.

H2 has seen some appraisal by defiant internet critics - the writers at Slant Magazine are fans. But its moment-by-moment image-making gets a much more effective treatment in The Lords of Salem. The film skips Zombie's usual interest in Southern-fried psychopaths and evokes Polanski in its story about a woman surrendering to encroaching malevolent supernaturalism. And as a deeply perverse, unapologetic baroque storyscape, the film works (I've discussed its virtues before). It's one of Zombie's two beautiful pieces of gold. Did I say beautiful? I mean nasty. Disgusting and nasty. I think Rob would appreciate the compliment.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T_obkwEkiRw/VDQ52BiCgxI/AAAAAAAACkg/Nz_sePIm5sM/s1600/zombie_thelordsofsalem.jpg

[Winston*]

Stuart Gordon is the only director so far I've seen a film that I really liked from so far. Maybe I just don't like horror films. Haven't seen anthing by Bogliano, Khalfoun, or Wan though (turned off Saw).

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stuart Gordon is the only director so far I've seen a film that I really liked from so far. Maybe I just don't like horror films. Haven't seen anthing by Bogliano, Khalfoun, or Wan though (turned off Saw).

Honestly, Gordon's my favorite director on this list, and his low standing is purely because he hasn't made a movie-film of any kind for six years. I think his episodes of Fear Itself and Masters of Horror are the best of their respective series.

[Winston*]

Re-animator and Stuck are awesome. Edmund is straight garbage though.

[megladon8]

I've yet to see The Lords of Salem. I've read such mixed things. The BluRay is $5 on Amazon, I should give it a shot.

Regarding the beginning fakeout in H2, I have always taken it as a joke and wink to the audience. "Thought I was just remaking Halloween 2, didn't ya??"

[Dead & Messed Up]

I've yet to see The Lords of Salem. I've read such mixed things. The BluRay is $5 on Amazon, I should give it a shot.

Regarding the beginning fakeout in H2, I have always taken it as a joke and wink to the audience. "Thought I was just remaking Halloween 2, didn't ya??"

I feel like that joke isn't as funny when it lasts a quarter of the movie.

[MadMan]

Lords of Salem is excellent.

[Rowland]

Regarding Gordon, I'd recommend King of the Ants, Dagon, and The Pit and the Pendulum as some of his undervalued efforts.

[Dukefrukem]

Zombie:

House of 1000 Corpse ***
Devil's Rejects ****
Halloween ***
Halloween 2 N/A
Lords of Salem **

[Dead & Messed Up]

Regarding Gordon, I'd recommend King of the Ants, Dagon, and The Pit and the Pendulum as some of his undervalued efforts.

I haven't seen his "middle movies." I.e.

Robot Jox
The Pit and the Pendulum
Fortress
Castle Freak
Space Truckers
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit

Probably start out with Pit and Castle Freak.

[Dead & Messed Up]

7. Jim Mickle
(Mulberry Street, Stake Land, We Are What We Are)


We kept our monsters in the shadows, mostly suggested. Besides, if you have good actors who can really look scared you can play scenes off of their reaction more than trying to scare the audience with showing the monsters. Our main aesthetic throughout was keeping it realistic and character-driven.

- On Mulberry Street, interview with Slant


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--u3dsczSsQ0/VESVU4aQQPI/AAAAAAAAClA/dr1To8KYGtQ/s1600/Mickle1.jpg

The films of Jim Mickle play like eulogies for the genres they inhabit. Oppressive doom, communicated through careful sound design, soft scoring, and limited colors, pushes a constant feeling of the world in decay. In movies like Mulberry Street and Stake Land, that decay matches to the physical settings: a run-down New York tenement and a barren post-apocalyptic USA. In cannibal drama We Are What We Are, the decay is internal, as a family keeps up appearances while rotting from the inside out. Viewers know these stories, but not told with this melancholic style.

That makes his films sound like a collective buzzkill, but all three feel renewing, filling the space between simple story development with sincerity and naturalism. These are real, plausible worlds into which horror intrudes. Consider We Are What We Are, in which a father preserves a family tradition of eating human remains. While he uses a glower and the specter of a dead mother to keep his children in line, his daughters fray at the edges. Mickle finds space for their struggle in pregnant pauses, moments of hesitation. The film plays like tragedy, Titus Andronicus as imagined by Nathaniel Hawthorne and adapted by Kubrick.


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y_TvNbySOU8/VESVVRl2pTI/AAAAAAAAClM/VoLLsHX070o/s1600/stake-land-poster.jpeg

Stake Land similarly reworks itself, using a vampire apocalypse (vampocalypse?) as a means to explore just how quiet and desolate an actual apocalypse would be. While movies like 28 Weeks Later and Land of the Dead escalate efficiently (if sometimes predictably) into high-stakes action extravaganzas, Stake Land sits perpetually at simmer. The focus rarely widens beyond its two main leads. Compared to those two films, Mickle's debut Mulberry Street is almost zippy, cross-cutting between a wide-range of New Yahwkers living on the eponymous street as a growing plague turns people into... but anyway, its characters are plausibly human, simple, grabbing what small reliefs they can find. An old man luxuriates in the idea of enjoying a good cigar. A middle-aged jogger quietly pines for an unwed mother.

Mickle's co-writer Nick Damici (who also acts in all three movies) is undoubtedly a large part of why these films work. The two have their own little indie-horror Scorsese/DeNiro partnership, with Damici playing as gruff, well-meaning types in all three movies. Like those movies, he trusts viewers to pay attention, to listen. Most people who watch horror watch it casually, for the roller coaster of depravity. And that's okay - who doesn't like a carnival? Jim Mickle shows viewers what happens when the carnival's stopped, and all that's left are the metal husks of tents and rides, beautiful and eerie, standing against a setting sun.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SJ6yE9Rgw8U/VESVVfMTmMI/AAAAAAAAClE/1qD5n0ZDavU/s1600/We%2BAre%2BWhat%2BWe%2BAre%2B2 013%2Bmovie%2Bposter.jpg

[Dukefrukem]

Approved.

[Dead & Messed Up]

6. Ti West.

Read it here. (http://horrorfilms101.blogspot.com/2014/10/halloween-our-best-directors-6-ti-west.html)

I'm going to stop with the list now on account of some personal stuff that's come up. *Everything is okay. *This is just taking up too much time.

The next five were gonna be...

5. Joe Dante - Enjoyed The Hole, loved his MOH episodes, think he has a great blend of horror enthusiasm and comic insouciance.

4. Ben Wheatley - Only really loved Kill List, but liked the spirit of Sightseers and ambition of A Field in England.

3. Lucky McKee - All Teenagers Die isn't my favorite thing, but it's a cut above the usual slasher crap, and May and The Woman kick ass.

2. Guillermo del Toro - Cinema's pre-eminent monster-maker.

1. Chris Smith - I want to make the kinds of movies this guy makes. *Which is part of the reason, I'm calling time.

[Winston*]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa?

[MadMan]

Ti West and Ben Wheatley are awesome. I liked Stakeland a lot. Also Joe Dante will always rule. I like del Toro of course.

[Morris Schæffer]

Approve of the love for The Conjuring!

[megladon8]

I really didn't like Stake Land, but Jen and I both really liked Mulberry St..

Particularly liked the character work in that one, though the movie falls into a bit of silliness towards the end.

Loved your list :)