It’s one thing for a movie to scare a general audience. But a movie that can frighten, disturb and haunt a fellow moviemaker? Now that’s a real achievement. After all, those are the folks who know first hand all the tricks of the trade when it comes to scaring viewers – the cinematic sleights of hand, the narrative manipulations. If a film can suspend all that knowledge, and bring into the moment enough to feel freaked out? Then that has to be a truly terrifying, upsetting experience.

So we wanted to know: what movies have left some of the coolest current auteurs quaking in their director chairs? Everyone from Nosferatu ’s Robert Eggers to Rian Johnson to Luca Guadagnino to the Oscars’ reigning Best Director Sean Baker provided responses. Not all of them are horror movi

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