Five Female Horror Directors Shaping the Future of the Genre
The next generation of female horror filmmakers are telling their own stories – and they're scary and thrilling as hell.
(Photo by © IFC Midnight)
Female creators are at the cutting edge of modern horror, turning out some of its most inspired, and twisted, offerings. Babadook director Jennifer Kent is one big name you might have heard of, but she’s at the crest of a huge wave of talent that’s likely to be splattering multiplexes with blood for decades to come.
Joining them is actor-turned-writer Kristen Ruhlin, who spoke recently with Rotten Tomatoes about what inspired her to move into the bloody world of horror. It’s a tale many female actors and writers tell: she wasn’t finding stories that spoke to her. “One of my close friends suggested I just write my own thing and stop relying on other people,” she said. The result is Welcome to Mercy, out in limited release November 2, which draws on her religious upbringing to craft a hair-raising tale of abduction and the occult, and one with a specifically female focus. Ruhlin plays Madeline, a young single mother stricken with stigmata, sent to a remote convent where nothing is what it seems. “The correlation between religion and horror goes back to…people searching for answers to things that we can’t explain, and that can be itself frightening.”
As Ruhlin’s movie hits theaters in limited release, and film media turns its focus on women in the horror genre, we’ve picked five films to watch from female horror filmmakers who are absolutely slaying right now.
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