Zach Cregger Leads 10 Horror Films That Get Out Shines In
Comic Book Resources put together a ranking of the 10 most perfectly directed horror movies of the 21st century, and the list keeps get out of the way of the craft itself. The selection treats direction as the organizing principle, not just scares or box-office weight, which makes the ranking a useful snapshot of how recent horror has been judged.
The list points to a run of filmmakers who have turned horror into a precision trade: Jennifer Kent with The Babadook, John Krasinski with A Quiet Place, Robert Eggers with The Witch, David Robert Mitchell with It Follows, and Zach Cregger after Barbarian and before Weapons. That mix tells readers which names are being treated as benchmarks, not just genre workers.
Jennifer Kent and The Babadook
Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is cited for its control of a story about a mother dealing with the loss of her husband while caring for her unruly son. The film also centers on the terrifying entity called The Babadook, giving the ranking one of its clearest examples of direction serving both emotional pressure and dread.
John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place reaches the list through a different kind of design: a family surviving on Earth after massive aliens called Death Angels overrun the planet and kill anything they can hear. The setup depends on strict visual and sound discipline, and that is exactly the kind of craft a “perfectly directed” list is trying to reward.
Robert Eggers and David Robert Mitchell
Robert Eggers’ The Witch stands out because it is set in the 1600s New England period, follows a Puritan who is banished from home, and uses dialogue fitting of the time while drawing heavily on folklore and witchcraft from the era. David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows lands for a different reason: it tracks Jay, a young woman who contracts a curse after having sex with someone she just met, then has to outrun an entity that can take the form of anyone.
Those two films show the range of what the ranking values. One leans on historical texture and language; the other turns a modern premise into a sustained chase. Both are presented as direction-first horror, where every formal choice does the work.
Zach Cregger After Barbarian
Zach Cregger enters the list with the article noting that he had already proven his chops with Barbarian before Weapons. Weapons centers on the disappearance of a group of children in a neighborhood after they all ran out of their house at 2:17 AM, and the excerpt stops there, leaving the plot point hanging while the ranking itself does the talking.
For readers, the takeaway is simple: this is not a generic best-horror roundup. It is a ranked case for which 21st-century directors have imposed the tightest control over mood, language, and structure, and the films named here are the ones being used as the reference points.
