From ‘Heretic’ to ‘I Saw the TV Glow’: How 6 filmmakers elevated horror movies in 2024

Horror movies took one step beyond elevated this year: Startling personal statements were made in the often-zomboid genre; self-image, culture and religion were given freshly dug-up perspectives; and conventions got turned on their ear or vivified with vibrant artistry. Co-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who wrote “A Quiet Place,” went the other way with this story of a voluble Hugh Grant challenging, then terrorizing, Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher’s young Mormon missionaries. ‘Strange Darling’ “Crash” and “Yellowstone” producer Bob Yari chose JT Mollner’s “Strange Darling” — a cannily time-shuffled reworking of “final girl” slasher tropes — to launch his indie film distribution company, Magenta Light. ‘The Substance’ Body horror explodes oppressive female beauty standards in “The Substance.” Demi Moore’s aging TV exercise host takes the mysterious title compound and a younger, fitter, hotter version emerges to renewed media success — until the Substance is abused with monstrous results. “I have joked — and it’s not a bad comp — that we’re reaching for Merchant/Ivory doing Hammer Horror,” says Eggers, who staged a version of the Germanic “Dracula” doppelgänger in high school.