Moviegoers love tales of mystery and suspense, and the film industry continues to provide them. Countless directors have tried their hands at this genre to varying degrees of success. For every storyteller who creates a first rate thriller, there are hundreds who have failed.
One director whose work remains legendary is the “master of suspense,” Alfred Hitchcock. “Hitch,” as he was known in the industry, directed classics such as “North by Northwest,” “Rear Window,” and “Psycho.” He set the bar for directors who followed and, in doing so, gave birth to a legion of imitators. Here are four modern directors of mystery and suspense who stand out among the rest.
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1. John Carpenter
Director John Carpenter took up Hitchcock’s mantle in the 1970s and 1980s with a slew of thrillers, including “The Fog,” “The Thing,” and “Halloween.”
Entertainment Weekly did a feature on director Carpenter in 2014, and noted that the 67-year-old’s influence “is being felt in cinemas as never before, with younger filmmakers falling over themselves to pay homage to the director.”
2. David Fincher
David Fincher directed “Seven,” “Zodiac,” and most recently, “Gone Girl” in 2014.
According to an article in Esquire magazine, Fincher is known for “directing dark, hyper-stylized movies ... making his audience work for him and fill in the gaps, imagining what isn't there.”
3. M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan broke onto the scene in 1998 with his thriller, “The Sixth Sense.”
Director Shyamalan had this to say in an interview for collider.com: “I consider myself an independent filmmaker ... I feel so comfortable making small independent movies. I aspire for the biggest audience to see them, but I would love to make the smallest movie as possible to maintain the integrity of process. I want it to be quirky.”
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4. Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan, director of “The Prestige” and “Inception” is considered by many to be a contemporary master of suspense.
As The New York Times put it in a 2014 feature, “Nolan, whose eight movies over 14 years have together generated just more than $3.5 billion in revenue, puts an extraordinary amount of time and effort into engineering believably ample worlds.”
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